Here’s the most recent of my journeys in a nutshell.

I arrived with about five minutes to spare to get my train down to London – luckily the station had ticket machines where I could buy my train ticket and pay for car parking. It took less than a minute and I still had time to buy a coffee before I got on the train (which has no buffet facilities, I know from experience).

So not a bad start – the technology did its job of making the transaction quick and simple.

This was where things started to go downhill. There was no one manning the little cafe. The chap in front of me eventually attracted the attention of a very miserable looking fella who reluctantly pressed the buttons on the cappuccino machine. No eye contact, no please or thank you, no offer of sugar or a lid.

A pretty dreary experience, and worst of all the coffee tasted awful. Had the member of staff been cheerful and passed the time of day I might have focused less on the dreadful coffee.

The train was packed – but that’s to be expected as its early morning and full of commuters. No sooner had I settled in my seat than the ticket collector came around, checking tickets from Banbury where I got on. Annoyingly my ticket was in my coat pocket on the parcel rack. But more to the point – my ticket was checked before I got on the train in Banbury, as was everyone else’s. As an aside there wasn’t just one ticket collector in Banbury station but a line of 5 of them. Only one was checking tickets and he was very pleasant. The others just stood there looking like extras from a 1950s film about the railways.

It’s great to have ample staff around – but not if they don’t appear to be doing anything productive and aren’t able to help.

Throughout the journey the announcer would interrupt my thoughts with very loud, crackly announcements - ‘We are now approaching High Wycombe’. He might as well have been saying ‘We are now approaching the gates of hell’ – he sounded so downtrodden and uninspiring.

I certainly had a growing impression that Chiltern Railways was a pretty miserable place to work.

To top it all – when I left the train at London Marylebone my Day Travel Card got stuck in the machine and I had to get some help, causing a delay to myself and half a dozen passengers behind me.

Now, in unpicking all of this I realise I am a bit of a grumpy old woman – but I just wanted to explore the difference that can be made by the people you encounter along the way.

A few weeks earlier I travelled from Leamington Spa to Birmingham on Virgin trains and had a completely different experience and one that, I have to say, reinforced my positive image of the Virgin brand.

On that occasion everything ran smoothly, from the helpful member of staff at the station who lent me a pen to write my car registration on my car park ticket and posted it into the right box for me, to the cafe facilities on the platform, the quality of the train itself, and the ticket collector who had a laugh and a joke with everyone as he made his way down the carriage.

Rightly or wrongly I’ve formed some opinions about Virgin and Chiltern Railways based on the contrast in the experiences I had with them. And this could be happening to your business too.

Have a think about the following and consider what opinions your customers are forming of your business:

1. How are visitors greeted when they visit your business premises? With a welcoming reception, a nice cup of coffee and a smile, are they left sitting there to be scowled at by whoever passes by?

2. Do you make it easy for clients to do the boring and mundane tasks (like buy a ticket) – it might be giving them the facility to pay your invoices online; order via your website or by email rather than telephone, or having a telephone system that makes it easy for them to reach the department they need quickly. Is your technology working for you to make the customer experience better?

3. How do your staff interact with clients and customers – are they encouraged to be open and friendly, to bring their personality to work as the Virgin team are, or told to keep quiet and hidden away? Think especially about PAs and switchboard operators who are often used to shield managers or business owners from unwanted calls. Are they given enough information to know which calls to let through and which to block? Are they able to help clients who call rather than just taking a message? Can they do the blocking in a friendly and engaging way? Does the behaviour of your staff reflect well on your brand?

4. Do you train your customer facing staff in client care skills? Should you?

5. Is your product great? How does it compare to the competition and if you are lacking in anything product wise could you make up for it with service excellence?

Service and product quality are key to marketing. And your service quality always boils down to how your people perform. In real terms my two train journeys weren’t so dissimilar – but the people I encountered had very different attitudes and left me feeling very differently about the product.

So my advice - don’t even think about the promotional side of marketing until you get service and product quality right.

Here’s hoping that Virgin Atlantic live up to my high expectations tomorrow when I fly off with them on holiday!

Further reading:

•  Three steps to avoiding losing customers

•  Value your customers in more ways than one