BSH, the home of Bosch, Siemens, Neff and Gaggenau, has just won the major TEQ Award for customer service for the second year on the run. Kbbreview spoke to customer service director, Bernhard Vocke...

In an economic environment where the consumer is watching the pennies, it's no wonder that customer service has become such an important issue in the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom market

These three rooms represent major purchases for any household not to mention the significant upheaval during installation, so the price they've agreed to pay often includes an expectation of aftercare and service. Warranty provider Domestic & General has made a very successful business out of what happens after a sale and every year of the last 13 it has surveyed customers who have invoked an extended warranty to evaluate the service they get from the manufacturers.

Those manufacturers are then ranked by their combined score across disciplines from the initial phone call through to the finished repair and, of course, someone has to come top. The winner receives a Total Excellence and Quality (TEQ) award and within the appliance sector this is seen as a major achievement. 

Last month the 2010 TEQ award was picked up by BSH, successfully defending its 2009 title against the likes of Indesit, GDHA, Electrolux, Hoover Candy and others. "It's so valuable as it benchmarks us against competitors," says customer service director Bernhard Vocke. "So we can compare our service delivery directly with the others. It doesn't tell us everything though; if for example, we are first in the call centre performance, we don't know which companies were second or third but we do know what score they got. 

"We don't have any others means of benchmarking ourselves against the competition, and the fact that it's done by a third party makes it especially valuable." 

BSH's customer service department gets around 25,000 calls a week, 25% of them coming in on a Monday, mostly between 9am and 11am. Calls relating to product failure total around 15,000, but only 6,000 or so of these are valid product faults and require an engineer call out. That sounds a lot but covers all BSH appliances in consumers' homes, totalling over 15 million and covering over 20 years of sales. 

The TEQ award benchmarks customer service against other companies, but Vocke says that even then it's subjective as it is the feedback of the customers that determines the score, and people have different expectations of different brands. 

"Ultimately it's all about what the customer expects from you as a service organisation and whether you are able to meet it," he says. "For example, if we sold a far cheaper brand then perhaps customer expectations would be lower and so the service level could be lower and we could still win the award. "I wouldn't say that if everybody had the same customer satisfaction level then they were all delivering the same service. I think customer expectations are different depending on the brand. If you pay more for a product you expect better service."  

Direct sales 

A customer service award is a very nice thing to shout from the rooftops to consumers, but BSH don't sell direct so why should their retailers care whether they win the TEQ award or not?

"This is the service that everyone gets, not just D&G customers," Vocke explains. "So a retailer can have these prestigious brands in his showroom and he knows that the service that comes with that appliance is excellent and he can recommend them with total peace of mind. We don't want shouting customers in his shop complaining and by giving good service from the first phone call to the engineer call out, it all helps to increase customer satisfaction and keeps them off the dealer's back." 

Vocke runs BSH's customer service department but the fact that they don't sell direct to consumers means that they only engage with the people who have bought the products after the sale and if there's a problem. In this context, BSH's actual customers are the distributors and retailers that buy the product from them and service levels here are more difficult to measure or monitor as closely - if at all. 

"We did a survey just a few months ago where we measured service delivery," Vocke says. "That's actually hard to evaluate because service to the retailer includes so many things - returns process, delivery - and that's often delivered by different departments than 'customer service'. But whichever part of BSH it comes from the philosophy is the same. We don't measure it on an ongoing benefit at the moment, but it is important that we deliver good customer service to the dealer and ultimately give them solutions. We are always improving our communication on what we do and how we do it and that helps the retailer." 

The TEQ award is significant in the appliance market, in fact GDHA won it three times in a row between 2005 and 2007, so what does BSH need to do to match that?

"It's not about 'big bang' changes," Vocke says. "We've worked hard over the last few years on processes and making sure we're aware of the service we deliver. We're working on new service management systems but really I think it's the mentality of continuous improvement and always striving to manage things better."

TEQ AWARD

Launched by Domestic & General and now in its 13th year
Service organisations for major brands take part 
420,000 questionnaires sent out to consumers, response rate of 43% 
Questions cover all aspects of service from intital phonecall to repair completion