The Consumer Experience

Last night I watched Mary Portas swing into action in Channel 4's new series "Secret Shopper". her assessment of customer service in the high street is pretty much spot on...in that there isn't much. I don't consider myself that unusual when it comes to shopping - and generally wouldn't need advising not to part with my money if I wasn't happy and tend to only go to shops where I think I have fair chance of being treated fairly...or better still treated well.

Of course it got me thinking about my own business. Can I say that we provide a truly unique service that is always brilliant? well I'd like to think so, but I know that this is never going to be 100% of experiences. I do believe that we treat people fairly and I enjoy the company of my clients and over time we become close. However, there is always more that could be done (or at least that's my mindset). I have limited time and resources, but Mary's changing room idea in her programme was great - I could do with something as revolutionary for my own firm and our services. OK, we invest in IT and I am expecting to annouce more improvements for clients shortly, but... we need something altogether more RADICAL with ENERGY.

So, I am hereby welcoming fantastic, knock-out ideas to make the experience of financial planning (all those data entries, reports, charts etc) rather more... enjoyable. I'm not naive enough to think that financial planning is "sexy" - we all know it isn''t, we also all know that it is important, yet most people do not behave as though it is. Something needs to change - for the nation, not just my firm, else we are destined to become a nation of overspenders that end up dependant upon the State... the bank of you and me.

Mary, if you read this - you are inspiring, but if I have one criticism - it would be not to have a go at the boss infront of the staff. Chris George, the CEO of Pilot took a very large bite into humble pie and I think this would have been better said to him alone. I don't think many of us would have coped better than he did in the circumstances - on camera.