UK needs to 'skill up'

3rd August 2010

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Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service, speaks to ePolitix.com about the role of professional bodies in helping the government to promote skills.

Is workforce skills training important if the UK is to seek to remain globally competitive over the next few years?

We are at a critical time; clearly the UK is competing in a global marketplace, and the recession's impact is not just being felt in the UK. When we went into the recession we were a service economy, and when we come out of the recession we will still be a service economy.

I believe that skills and training are very important. Over two thirds of UK GDP comes from service or service-related industries, and 75 per cent of employees in the UK are in the services industry. The Institute believes there is a real renaissance in terms of customer service. The recession has sharpened organisations' focus when you are in a competitive marketplace – how can you compete except on service? You can only cut costs so far, so you have to be able to offer more than just price, you always have to have value for money.

In addition, there is evidence to show that where organisations focus on service, they are able to find the efficiency gains they need. This is reflected in our biannual UK Customer Satisfaction Index, which indicates that customer satisfaction has increased during the recession as organisations work harder to attract and retain business.

As consumers we are far more demanding than perhaps we used to be, therefore we expect better quality and a higher level of service. If you look at last quarter's higher-than-expected UK growth figures, they were driven by the service sector, again the largest single growth area. Additionally, by 2014, the Institute's own research indicates that there will be the need for over 550,000 jobs in customer service alone.

As a direct consequence, the customer skills agenda is even more important to ensure that we are able to respond to the demands and needs out there in terms of the employer marketplace and its consumers. I absolutely believe this is a critical time; significant growth doesn't just happen – we have to skill up, train and develop our people.

What more can be done to promote the skilling and re-skilling of the workforce?

I think that we need to have stability in the skills agenda and a real consensus about what the goals actually are – understanding what the barriers are to people getting new skills, and making it much easier for them to access these skills.

It's not a one-size-fits-all solution and it's not always about technology. We need to understand and get the message across as to why it's so important. Only recently the UK Commission for Employment and Skills estimated that 10 million people in this country need to improve their skills if the UK is to achieve its ambition of being in the top eight countries in the world for skills, jobs and productivity by the end of the next decade. That is the size of the task.

We also need to appreciate that customer service skills are transferable, and this is particularly pertinent to the whole skills agenda – customer service skills are transferable across all sectors.

We need to recognise that today's marketplace is very different to that of a generation ago, when people stayed in jobs for life. Nowadays we are far more likely to change roles; therefore the transferability that customer service skills bring is even more important for me as an individual trying to understand what my skills need to be, but also for employers. We need to understand that it's about lifelong learning and not just something done at the start of a new career or job. We are in a hugely competitive world; change is constant and accelerating, and therefore we need to be able to deal with those changes.

What role do professional bodies such as the Institute of Customer Service have in developing skills within the workforce? Is this especially pertinent in a time of government cuts?

Professional bodies set standards as well as providing and promoting employer-led routes for developing and recognising both organisational development and individual service skills and competencies. The Institute has over 350 organisational members who are employers across all sectors; therefore we understand the needs of those employers. We have been delivering many of the skill sets into those employers for some time and will continue to do so. We are here to promote and support the national skills agenda; it is one of our key aims.

I think it is naïve to assume that the skills sector will be immune from cuts in public funds. Professional bodies need to drive the agenda both individually and collectively to communicate clearly what we do. I think there is a real opportunity now to really raise our game because clearly the cuts in the public spending arena will have an impact. Our job is to work even more closely, both collectively and with employers, to ensure that we are taking that strain.

Will the recession have a long-term impact on the position of customer service in the UK economy?

This is a fantastic opportunity, because UK plc can differentiate itself by the service it delivers. I would hope that the recession does not actually have a detrimental impact, but it will do if organisations believe service is a cost. What we need to do is continue to change the mindset to get employers to understand that service is a way of driving greater return on investment and driving greater efficiencies and effectiveness. It's a real opportunity to look at our business models differently and from a strategic business perspective.

We know that labour market research shows that in the next few years growth in service-related employment will out strip any other sector despite the skills shortages. Therefore, we need to think differently about the impact that service experience can actually deliver in terms of competitive advantage, or indeed in terms of driving those efficiencies. This is a particularly important message for the public sector at a time when it is facing large budget cuts.

I think we have talked for a long time now about being a hi-tech, research-driven economy. That is very important and a laudable aim, but we are also service-dominated and we need to focus ourselves on how all these things join together. In the past, I have explained on ePolitix about our world-class service model, where we look at processes, people and strategy of organisations. That's what we do; we help organisations understand how you join all of those to drive that tangible return on investment and to drive those efficiencies.

I would also suggest that customer focus can lead to increase in net profit of more than 20 per cent and over 70 per cent higher profit per employee. There is enough supporting evidence that demonstrates that there is a real return on investment from the efforts we have put into focusing on customer service excellence. That is also transferable in terms of the public sector as much as it is in the private sector.

Other research demonstrates that the cost of poor customer service to the UK economy last year was over £15bn; £248 is the average annual value of each customer relationship lost, and 73 per cent of consumers have ended a relationship due to poor customer service. If we can make a two-to-five per cent improvement in that, think about the return that would actually bring to the UK economy.

What steps would you like the coalition government to take in order to further promote the skills agenda?

First and foremost, understanding the role of a professional body, and helping to focus on the fact that professional bodies can take a leading role in the skills agenda. Professional bodies can provide a greater input, and government can help us by providing support and simplifying the structure. We also need to make it simpler for the customer (i.e. the employer) to understand and engage a new system and to understand that we are operating in new times, and therefore we need to be much more focused on the genuine benefits of delivering a customer service approach.

I would be looking for greater dialogue with the coalition in order to drive that forward.

Why is it important that professional bodies help the work of the coalition government in this sector?

We need to help the government to understand the critical role of professional bodies and what we do.

We set the standards, we promote employer-led routes for developing and recognising organisations and individuals, and we provide benchmarking and research. Therefore, getting us more involved in this meaty and very important agenda will make a significant difference in developing the skills required, both in the immediate term and the long term, and in positioning the UK as a competent, competitive marketplace in the global economic landscape.

For more information please view the Institute of Customer Service's ePolitix.com microsite.