Curious about todays poor Christmas results announcements from Tesco, I decided to visit my local Tesco Superstore, as I haven't been there for a while, to see if I could notice anything different, that might help explain their problems.

And besides: it's sale time and my wife's birthday in a month so they might have some cheap hoovers or ironing boards!

Amazingly, I immediately noticed some glaring issues: they have really lowered their game (and there were very few bargains compared to their rivals ... (got some fab stuff in Sainsbury's last week)).

Here's my award for the poorest service of 2011.

I am looking for a new car to lease: I fancied a small Mercedes Estate, so I phoned the Exeter dealer: I arranged an appointment that was then confirmed by email.

On the day in question, heer's what happened!

From my many years experience of helping people sell more through better service, I am convinced that the real issue for most people and organisations is that sellers should serve more and servers should sell more: what I mean by this is:

Sellers: no one likes to be sold to, but everyone likes to buy! So why do people try and sell things so hard? And why are sales people often so disliked? And why are people usually scared of ‘selling’? The answer is that sellers try to sell, and instead should concentrate on service with the belief that: if they deliver the service well, the sales will follow. Sellers should drop trying to ‘hard sell’, stand back, understand what the customers really need, and help them achieve that, whether they buy from them or not: by doing this customer4s will want to buy from them and they will become great salespeople.

Servers are too often preoccupied with service: they forget what the purpose of it is, which is to generate more sales and profits: that is the whole point of service! Servers are far too ' service orientated ' and very often not enough ' sales orientated '. ' Customer service ' is often seen as ‘soft’ and 'nice’, often dissociated with the hard world of commerce and making a profit: nothing could be further from the truth: servers need to realise that giving great customer service is fantastic, but the whole purpose of it is to generate sales and profits in the immediate and long-term.

For a bit of fun, here's 10 simple things that drive customers crazy.

How about having a 15 minute meeting on one or more of these and throw around some ideas of:

> Why it's so annoying to the customer

Whatever you do, your customer will see it. Eventually every hidden aspect of your Organisation will be found out by them.

And in today's communicated world, this can be transmitted to the world at the speed of light. Your customer service is now transparent ... whether you like it or not.

Problems and foul-ups are there indefinitely when posted to websites, message boards and the like. And so are recommendations and praise.

Here's a quote from a customer of a client Company, who'd make a real cockup.

the initial designer disappeared off the sight of the earth, and some of his work required the Co to run about in order to resolve properly: the MD took charge and came and delivered a piece of furniture personally. The leadership was outstanding in a very difficult situation. They were superb in a very stressful situation ... I'd definitely recommend them!

So: remember: when it all goes pear shaped, there's a HUGE opportunity to wow the customer and turn a cockup into a triumph!

Suggestion: train all your staff on this continually and look for examples of this happening so you can publicise them throughout your team or Organisation.