At a Glance

David Grieveson is the Head of Customer Service at WaveGlobalUK, a UK-based company selling a lifestyle of adventure and relaxation. With products that range from entry-level to high-end in the space of home spas and outdoor recreation, WaveGlobalUK has a lot to offer and plenty of opportunities for new users to see what they’re all about.

Who is David Grieveson?

Meet David Grieveson, the Head of Customer Service at WaveGlobalUK!

About WaveGlobalUK‍

WaveGlobal prides itself on offering not just products to help you enjoy your life and the outdoors, but a whole lifestyle that promotes adventure and relaxation. If you’re looking to get out on the water and have entirely new experiences you can do it with some of their high-quality water sports equipment. Or if you’re looking to relax you can choose one of their top-notch spas to offer the perfect experience right at your own home.

David’s CX Journey

David has been a customer service professional for many years, working in several different organizations and even having the opportunity to lead the customer service department many times. Throughout all of those times, his only disappointment was that the customer service departments were already set up and there wasn’t an opportunity to really set his own ways or put his own stamp on things.

That’s when WaveGlobalUK came in. When the opportunity to lead the customer service department at Wave came up, the company didn’t have the customer service experience set yet. It wasn’t quite right and they were ranked at only a 2.9-3 on Trustpilot. David was given the opportunity to transform the organization. And he did.

Joining WaveGlobalUK at that point in their journey allowed David to create a team and a customer service experience that really worked for the company and the customer and in the time he's been there he’s already raised their TrustPilot score to 4.2. He’s loving the freedom to do what he wants with this role, and the opportunity to keep raising the bar.

The CX Team at WaveGlobalUK

WaveGlobalUK is a company based in the North East of England, with a customer service team of seven people.

What’s unique about the team isn’t that they are operating remotely (though largely UK based). What’s unique is that, other than David, the entire customer service team is almost brand-new not just to customer service, but to the workforce in general.

David references how his team is all ‘young people’ who are just out of college, except for him. But they have the skills that are really important in customer service, including David’s number one most important skill, just being nice.

Where many customer service leaders have complicated philosophies about their team and the experience they provide the customers, David’s is simple. Just be nice. And he believes that the entire team has bought into that philosophy, which means the team runs smoothly and offers a great experience to the customer, every time.

Adding to the Team

When it comes to hiring new people, the most important factor for David? Attitude. It’s not about experience, though that can be helpful. The experience and the skills specifically related to their business can be taught. The attitude, however, including the desire to just ‘go out and get it’ or chase a resolution for a customer, that’s something that they need to have on their own.

To get those new members ready for working with the customer, David starts by training them on the products and even encourages them to test out those products. That way, they have the answers to questions customers might be wondering. After that, he works with them on answering customer questions together and then? Another round of product training.

David says that the second round of product training is where the new members really come into their own because they know even more questions to ask and they’re even more invested in learning about the product.

And, in the process of training, David teaches new team members about Zendesk, the system they use for many different tasks, including reports, tracking and metrics. This is the system he uses to keep track of what’s going on with each of his team members and he makes sure they not only know what he’s looking for, but also know how to check their own numbers along the way so they can make sure they’re doing what they need to.

Bringing Back Customers with the Right Experience

At WaveGlobalUK keeping customers coming back means helping the hobbyists or the beginning users who start out looking for something fun and simple to find something even better the next time. It might mean helping the customer who came in for an inflatable spa before to come back for a foam one the next time or an entry level kayak to upgrade to something higher end for their next trip.

And when summer comes around, that’s the time to do it because that’s actually peak season for WaveGlobalUK. To make sure the company is ready, David makes sure that they have a few temporary staff on board and ready to go. And he’s working on creating a help center and an AI chatbot in Zendesk.

While David believes that there’s a lot of things to do with AI, he does think it has its drawbacks too. When it’s working well, David’s view is that AI can be ‘the best thing the world has ever seen.’ It can work great for a quick bit of help or sending information during off-times for the business (like the customer with a question at 2am). But he definitely doesn’t believe that it’s the answer to the future of customer service.

According to the research he’s done, individuals over the age of 50 are not interested in working with AI and they actually distrust it. While those under 30 tend to prefer AI to interacting with humans. What does all this mean? It means that David isn’t interested in replacing his customer service team with AI because what most of their customers want is the personal touch and a bit of character. Not just a robotic answer.

Helping Future Generations

When it comes to helping new customer service leaders to do better, David believes that there are three important factors. The first is the philosophy that he focuses on in his team, just being nice. When everyone buys into that simple philosophy it can make amazing things happen.

Being positive is another factor, and it’s part of his belief that there should never be any Sunday Night Dread on his team. He wants his team to enjoy coming to work and enjoy what they do. If they dread Monday morning, he believes that he’s not doing his job right and that’s something that other leaders should be paying attention to as well in their own companies.

Finally, when they’re working with customers, always look for mutual ground. It doesn’t have to be related to the call or the feedback that you’re getting from the customer, but just finding something that you can agree on that makes you sound like a human being can go a long way to making them feel better right from the start.

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