I remember once stepping off a transatlantic flight, still reeling from the rictus grins and endless refills of lukewarm coffee offered to me by the BA cabin crew, only to be greeted by a sea of disapproving faces at Heathrow.
My sin? Possibly existing, or maybe just trying to queue for passport control in the wrong lane. The moral of the story? There’s no shortage of ways the British can make you feel you shouldn’t have bothered, especially when you’re accustomed to the almost comical “Have a great day!” one gets in the States.
But here’s the rub: customer service matters. It really, really does. It matters not just because it gives your clients an immediate sense of whether you actually care about their custom, but because in a world where companies are jostling like punch-drunk boxers in a ring, being that little bit friendlier might be the difference between an uppercut that floors the competitor or being left, dazed and drooling, as your prospective customer wanders off to the chap next door.
Of course, we British like to say we’re polite. We queue, we mutter “thank you” when receiving short change from a bus driver, and we gush “so sorry” when a stranger treads on our foot. But politeness and customer service aren’t identical twins. One’s a formal courtesy – that benign acceptance of a neighbour’s savage new hedge sculpture, or a dull relative’s account of their bunions – whereas the other is a more deliberate, structured approach to treating customers well. Actual, genuine, helpful niceness. This is where we struggle.
Let’s be honest about it: American businesses, from the smallest diner in Boise, Idaho, to the glitzy mega-stores of Manhattan, generally do it better. They have a method – a downright formula. You enter a shop and someone greets you. They smile broadly (all teeth, no cynicism), ask you how you’re doing, and inquire if they can assist you. Sometimes it’s syrupy, sometimes a bit forced, but by and large, you walk out feeling a tad better, or at least not guilty that you darkened their door. Contrast that with the classic British “You all right there?” half-delivered from behind a stack of paperwork, while the assistant pointedly ignores the existential pain creeping across your face because you just want to find a size 10 in that jacket.
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