I had an interesting experience with Halfords over the past 24 hours.  I traveled 42 miles to get a Power Pack from the Hereford store.  When I got home I discovered that it was a previously returned item with parts missing.  The store said that I would have to take it back and apart from offering to put the missing part in the post refused to do anything else.  The national Customer Service Hotline spoke to the store manager who implied that I was lying about damage to the unit's labeling - again the only option offered was if I returned to Hereford with the item.  The Customer statements on the website are very customer centric (http://www.halfordscompany.com/strategy/customer-focus) so,  as I was aware of the recent exit of the CEO of Halfords, I decided to write to the new interim CEO - Mr Dennis Millard.  A quick response from his Executive Assistant and a call from the Area Manager within a few hours has restored some faith - it is a shame that the response and apology was so reactive.  

Recently I have had cause to call both Orange and Vodafone - and had a torrid time.

Today I am off to spend the day with Rocket Consultancy in support of a large project involving empathy measurement.  Always lovely to work with the Rocket team.

We are delighted to welcome CGA Experience to the UK & EMEA Licensee Group. 

At the end of last year (2011) we launched a joint venture between Compathy, SOCAPiE and Oxford Brookes University Business School. Together we are re-constructing the old ERIC Benchmarking Programme under a new banner 'ASPIRE60'.

My mother is a very competent 80 year old mother of 7 and grand mother of 24.  She is currently mastering an ipad with alarming ease!  She told me a story the other day which I thought I would pass on.  She wanted to buy some filter pods for her new coffee machine and knew that they were available in most supermarkets.  So as not to waste a journey she rang the local Tesco and asked if they had some in stock and whether they could set some aside.  They seemed completely unaware of their stock levels and certainly couldn't be bothered to go to the shelves and check or put them aside.  So my mother rang Morrisons which is far less convenient being about a further 25 miles round trip.  They, in contrast, couldn't have been nicer.  They checked their stocks, went to the shelves and put the required number of coffee pods aside for collection.  On arrival my mother went to the Customer Service till and they greeted her by name and gave her the coffee.  I tell this story because my mother is not easy to please and this has made a real impact on her.  Well done Morrisons - you have more converts by way of my mother, her children and her grandchildren.

Yesterday I delighted to be invited to speak at the Horsley Network Event in East Horsley, Surrey.  The venue was Horsley Towers, previously the home of the Lovelace family and now a De-Vere Hotel.  It was a delight to meet the business people of the village and, whilst there was an eclectic group (from garden designers to marketeers and design agencies) it was clear that they all understood and appreciated the importance of empathy in the workplace.  One small incident that I owned up to was the fact that I arrived for an 8am start when in fact the meeting was scheduled for an 8pm start! - Unfortunately I didn't read the small print!  The 12 missing hours in Guildford were an excellent opportunity to catch up on telephone calls and explore Guildford's coffee shops.  It was a well spent 21 hour day (with 40 minutes of speaker time) however I encourage everyone to check the timings of their events - particularly if near Guildford!

At the recent ECEW conference in London I had the pleasure of meeting Nina Gyubbenet (Customer Operations Director from Tele2 Russia).  Tele2 is a mobile phone operator with 30 million subscribers.  2 years ago Nina saw a presentation I did on the correlation between Empathy and profit and began a 2-year journey building empathy into their offerings with great results.  Go to case studies for the results.