Is Covid a good excuse for poor service?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been enjoying staycations and I'm honestly surprised at the poor level of service at many places and the common excuse is Covid.

At a 'Luxurious Bed & Breakfast" their description not mine! We arrived at 3pm to check in and were abruptly told "You cannot come in we are spraying for Covid". Not a problem, but can we come in and just get changed in the bathroom for the local beach and come back later? No that is not possible, so we sat fully clothed on a beach for a couple of hours before we went back. On our return they apologised, but we won't be going there again or recommending it to anyone.

My daugher and her husband arrived at a 5 star hotel in Athlone for a stay and arrived at 4pm (normal check-in time) but were told they can't check in until 6pm and it was pouring rain, so they had to wait for two hours to get to their room, and yes the excuse was Covid.

I've had a lot of problems recently with a major international mobile company because the broadband service keeps dropping off and we live in a major city with the fastest broadband apparently. I tried to use their WhatsApp for support help but it says sorry there may be a delay due to Covid. They were right after three efforts to use the support service over 3 days I received the same answer saying I hope you have resolved the problem and were sorry it took so long for us to reply but due to Covid .......

So I decided to move to another competitor as broadband is important to my business. I got through quickly, everything was done over the phone. I even got a thank you letter from them for joining their network and it was a better rate.

Now all I had to do was cancel my current broadband subscription a company with a trendy train, airline, softdrinks, and mobile company in the UK. I rang their support number and guess what "We are sorry but due to Covid we are experiencing delays in our call-centre and it may take up to one hour for an answer. True enough it was 56 minutes waiting, so they know they have a problem. If I was a Senior Manager in that organisation I would be very concerned. How long will it be before they realise they have a serious problem. Will it take a serious loss of market share to wake them up and then they will start to recruit or find solutions to their service quality? When I spoke to the staff I asked is there a problem and they said yes it's Covid.

However, their competitors (I rang 4 of the major broadband suppliers in this country) don't have this problem? So is there solution? It seems the Leadership of the company are unaware of the problem otherwise why would they allow such poor a poor level of customer support? Just look at the number of customer who complain about their service quality.

They should consider conducting regular mystery shopping audits to highlight the problems before the majority of their customer experience them. When I worked at one of the best airlines in the world we set up and ran regular mystery shopping on all aspects of our business from call-centres to travel shops to aircraft interiors and baggage delivery. We were able to identify bottle necks and prevent problems from getting bigger. Mystery Shopping is an important part of service strategy, but many organisation don't understand it's value. It is critical to find the problems before the majority of your customers do.

My advice to these organisation is to do mystery shopping on their own organisation. Call them, visit them, talk to the staff and see what they say. On my call to the agent to cancel he told me yes they are having serious problem and that he will try to advise the senior managers. Does your organisation have a process to hear if problems are getting out of control from the front-line? This organisation doesn't seem to have one.

If you are interested in setting up a mystery shopping unit or require mystery shopping, then get in touch, you don't want to lose control of your business service quality?