Vernon Hill's unwavering dedication to establishing an exceptional service culture For Metro Bank London has allowed his company to become a multi-billiion dollar enterprise in just five short years. In this entry, I zero in on the customer service techniques leveraged by Hill and his team to set their business head and shoulders above the competition.

My focus in this blog post is on Vernon Hill, Founder of Metro Bank London. Funded 95% by Americans with $1.2 billion ( I am one of them)  He founded Commerce Bank in the US in 1973 (the 20,000^th  smallest bank in the US to the 18th largest bank in the US before selling in 2007. All built around customer service. No money spent on advertising. (If you had invested money at the start, your return on investment would have equaled 470 times).

One of the things that I love about Northeast Delta Dental is that they are a values-driven company.  They state in their description of their company that they successfully balance profitability and community involvement.  They make sure that they encourage children and adults alike to practice good oral health habits with contests and donations to programs that benefit everyone.

There’s Bad and then there’s REALLY Bad customer service.  The recent experience I had with Dish Network qualifies for REALLY, REALLY Bad customer service and it just doesn’t get much worse than this.  They did absolutely everything wrong they possibly could and then some.

In 1979 I wrote the world's first customer service program. Customer service has not improved a lot but firms talk about it more. What I saw in 1979 I still see today. Firms spend millions on advertising trying to attract customers and then when they walk through the door, phone or Internet they are hit on the head with baseball bats so they do not come back.