Savile Row*

Membership requirements for the Savile Row Bespoke Association require that tailors typically create a two-piece suit with at least 50 hours of hand work.

The full tailoring process can take 60 to 80 hours, which goes some distance to explaining the costs; bespoke suits start around £4,600 and head significantly upwards from there.

Most suit wearers will never be customers of a Savile Row master tailor, whether for lack of funds, lack of access, or lack of interest. But there are plenty of other options: Customers can choose suits at varying prices from off-the-rack department store suits through custom alterations to a full bespoke suit made outside of the Row at lower cost.

The right option will change even for the same person over their suit-wearing lifetime. At different life stages, income levels, different purposes and locations for wearing the suit, and the expectations of other people.

The value of high quality tailoring is visible and therefore the cost differences feel justifiable. In the world of intangible online customer support, the value of support tiers doesn't show up in red carpet photos.

Tiered support also faces an internal challenge. Customer support teams tend to have a strong sense of fairness, believing every customer deserves the best support experience delivered in order of their need, and their request.

As a starting point, it’s entirely reasonable and if your business model and financial margins can sustain offering Savile Row level service to every customer, happy days. There are no tough support decisions to make.

If the products and services you sell are low cost then that margin may not exist, or at least not for some large chunk of customers. The job of the support leader is then scaling service down to something manageable and sustainable. Many support teams choose to offer one level of support that every customer receives, controlling the incoming support through choice of channels or operating hours.

With AI tools potentially offering a richer self-service experience, could this be the time reconsider your support offerings? Is there potential to offer a range of support levels according to what customers are willing to pay for?

It may feel uncomfortable to consider, for some of us, but if we look forward a year or two then access to talk to (or chat to or email with) real people might be significantly less common. The perceived value of a human support person could be a lot higher than it has been.

If that future comes to pass, how will you set up your team? Could you be building in the value of personal support to your service pricing, either directly or indirectly? When your customers are used to a somewhat hallucinatory experience dealing with bots, will they be more willing to invest in a service that will meet them person to person?

I don’t know, nobody does. But there will be an answer and I’d certainly prefer if support leaders were the ones experimenting and finding out. What do you think?

* Savile Row is also home to Apple Corp headquarters, where The Beatles famously developed some of their greatest songs in mere minutes....after years of hard work. Your work is the same, though don't expect as much of a crowd for your rooftop support experience.