"It was never my career goal to end in customer service, but it automatically came as a result of my previous experience. In every job you deliver customer service, whether it is sales, finance or commerce. As various companies bring to the market increasingly more comparable products, customer service becomes a real differentiator between them."

The concept

What is your understanding of customer service?

"It is surprising and delighting customers with what we do. It includes giving them information about the products and peace of mind in terms of their functionality and positive resolution of any potential problems. An important element of this is empathy with which the customer should be treated. We have to remember that in most instances customer service starts with a failure - when a product breaks down.

"We strive to provide the highest level of customer care, defined in this way, in relation to all four brands of BSH Group - Bosch, Siemens, Neff and Gaggenau."

The BSH system

I ask Bernhard to describe how the BSH group delivers its customer service, which in 2003 won them ‘TEQ national service award' for the best after sale service.

"The BSH Group has a fleet of 300 engineers who cover most of the country. Only in Wales and the Scottish Highlands does BSH use local service companies. Once a breakdown has been reported, the engineer's visit takes place between 48 and 72 hours later. It can happen the next day. We even give Sunday service if the customer needs it. After the customer's call is registered, the service office analyses the call and prepares spare parts for the engineer.  They are sent to him overnight. In this way we achieve 90% of service fulfilment on the first visit, meaning that only in 10% of cases a follow up visit is necessary.

"Until 2004, we had eight regional service centres from which engineers collected spare parts every morning. They became obsolete when we implemented an overnight delivery programme from Milton Keynes, and area service managers became field-based while the service support centre became centralised, first in Milton Keynes and, since the last year, in Kettering. Now the mangers are home based and spend more time with engineers and visiting dealers.

"We carry out our own customer satisfaction surveys in which we ask customers for their feedback on their service experience and accessibility of our customer call centre. The customers should be able to get through to the centre at the first attempt. This is crucial since the perception of the service by the customers able to get through the first time in comparison with those who had to try again differs significantly.

Working with indies

Bernhard stresses that customer service which comes with the appliance is also crucial for the trade. The group works hard to "give retailers piece of mind".

"When we expand our service areas, our managers and engineers visit independent stores to present themselves and the ‘package' which we offer with the product.  We encourage independents to recommend our service to their customers, since we believe that, with all the human and technical infrastructure behind us, we can best handle repairs of our products.  Our philosophy is to be an honest broker between customers and our brands."

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