INSIDER VIEW: The danger of letting standards slip

What happens when a luxury experience stops feeling so luxurious?

The worry for all those companies that operate in the world of serving high net worth clients is allowing standards to drop. If you have a bad experience at Tesco or Walmart, the chances are that you’ll still shop there in the future. Everyone needs bread and milk, right?

But when a luxury experience or product disappoints a customer, the strain on the relationship can be terminal. When large sums of money are being parted with, tolerance of inadequacy is (rightly) low. 

Ultimately, this is no bad thing. It’s what keeps operators within the luxury sector, including watch retailers, on their toes. If there was no financial consequence to poor customer service or a sloppy product, then those lower standards would set in forever. But because the consequences hit the top line and bottom line so hard, standards necessarily get elevated.

None of this is rocket science or new, but I was reminded of it when I read a recent rant on Twitter (now ‘X’) by ex-BBC TV presenter and political columnist, Andrew Neil. The company in his crosshairs was British Airways.

This is an company with over a 100 years of heritage, and formerly known as “The world’s favourite airline.”

It would appear that those days are long gone. The retirement of Concorde back in 2003, Covid lockdowns, IT infrastructure problems, and deteriorating punctuality performance, have left the company a shadow of its past self.

“I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA,” Neil said on Twitter. “These days are over.”

He didn’t stop there. “I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier.”

Part of his ire was, as is often the case, to do with the devil in the detail. “They [BA] can’t even get the little things right. I flew from London to NYC yesterday in First Class. WiFi was meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free WiFi didn’t work, so I had to pay for it.”

What’s the equivalent of broken WiFi and a poor boarding experience when it comes to watch retail? A gap in product knowledge among sales staff, perhaps. Maybe a fancy new till system that makes the actual payment process overcomplicated and lengthy. Or it could be something as simple as the way a customer is looked at or spoken to.

Luckily, the vast majority of watch retailers that I’ve been lucky enough to meet have got almost every base covered. Their commitment to world class customer service is second to none, especially those ADs of the biggest brands in the world.

No stone is left unturned when it comes to shop refurbs, staff training, merchandising, or ‘clienteling,’ in terms of personalising the service to make it as heartfelt and bespoke as possible.

And this is how it should be, purely from the perspective of free market forces, rather than any ideological reasons. Wealthy individuals will happily pay top dollar for the best products and the best service. Those same people will run a mile and never be seen again if they feel like they’re paying a premium for a sub-par experience.

‘Twas ever thus, of course, but there’s no harm in being reminded of these simple but crucial facts from time to time.

I’ll leave the last word of warning to the incandescent Neil: “Now BA is just another middling airline charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it.”