Chief Customer Officer, SilverDoor Account Management Team, winners of the Service Excellence Team Award 2024

Congratulations on your award! Can you tell us what this recognition means to you and your team?

Personally, it fills me with immense pride. At SilverDoor we live and breathe customer service and for the team to be recognised for that, alongside so many other finalists for whom we have huge respect, is such an honour.

But there are so many people behind the scenes, across the whole business, that contribute to developing and delivering the services that our clients see every day, and so this award is for all our SilverDoorians. 

What inspired you to pursue excellence in your specific field within the business travel industry?

It’s been at the heart of our business for the last 24 years and it’s what our customers have come to expect. My experience outside of SilverDoor - and in my personal life - is that it’s becoming harder and harder to find truly exceptional service and that inspires us to keep finding new ways to do it better than anyone else. 

Our inspiration also comes from the feedback we get from our customers: clients and partners who tell us that they not only value the service we provide, but that they really enjoy working with us. We understand that it’s our job to make our customers’ lives easier, to help them achieve their goals and to support them from the moment they get in touch, to the point a guest checks out. 

We also have the mentality that if you’re going to do anything, do it to the best of your ability, with care, honesty, and humility. 

You've achieved significant growth and maintained high service standards. What strategies have been crucial in managing this growth?

The gathering and leveraging of data has been incredibly helpful in maintaining high standards, being able to analyse our output as well as make comparison with the wider market and competitor sets. 

This has helped us to maintain our SLAs and expand our KPIs, which have also been enhanced thanks to the types of customers we have, who demand the very best from their suppliers and partners. These things definitely help keep us at the top of our game all the time.

Our Account Management structure which spans our offices in London, Lancaster, Madrid, Dubai, Denver & Singapore, is agile and flexible meaning we have been able to grow globally whilst still delivering the same high-quality service that we are known for. 

We have also invested heavily in our systems and automation. This not only provides a consistently good experience to our customers no matter where in the world they are and who they interact with, it also allows our people to spend less time on process, and more time adding value where it really matters – more often than not, it’s a small, personal touch that a guest will really remember. 

How do you balance technology and personal touch in delivering excellent customer service?

We’re a people-powered company backed up with great technology, not the other way round. 

Technology is there to make all our lives easier, to deliver value internally and to our customers, but the ability to pair that with exceptional people who can apply knowledge and experience with integrity and warmth is what makes our proposition a powerful one. 

We’ve spent a significant amount of time identifying where technology can bring efficiencies, cost savings and enhancements but always with an eye on where human interaction is required. For instance, at SilverDoor there will always be someone at the end of the phone within a few rings: no automated lists or endless menus, just a real person if you need them. It sounds really simple but so many businesses don’t think it’s important. We know it is. 

What advice would you give to others in the business travel industry looking to make a significant impact?

Don’t forget the basics and remember the small details. Travellers want to feel valued, not like a line at the end of a data sheet, particularly when travelling for business and away from home. 

It’s also easy to overcomplicate things and get hung up on the story of the day, but try to strip it all back, understand what’s really important, what your customer wants, and how to deliver that.