Customer care is top of the list for staff who work at a county service station

Keeping it in the family: Bill Reynolds, left, with his son Lee and wife Janet, aka 'Nanny'

Loitering intently on the concrete hardstanding of the petrol station forecourt, it’s easy for the hard-pressed motorist to feel unloved.

Most drivers are here under duress, the pain on their faces evident as they watch the cash they haven’t got go into their fuel tanks.

If there was a time that we needed a spot of tender loving care, that time is now.

Hamstrung by spiralling fuel costs, the ordinary driver is a beleaguered creature and now, more than ever, he or she appreciates good customer service.

Luckily Shropshire has a hero and his name is Keiran Bostock, 21. Not that he wears a superhero outfit or anything like that, it’s just the regular BP uniform everyone else behind the counter at Longmynd Service Station wears. But he was recently was singled out following a mystery shopper experience as a forecourt “Hero” at the station which was voted one of the best in the UK for customer service.

Pulling up at the garage, it’s immediately clear that here, behind Keiran’s smile and gentle voice, is a chap who cares for his customers. And that would seem to be a quality that is clearly disappearing from the consumer experience these days, given that Mary Portas, TV’s Mary Queen of Shops – recruited this week to try to resurrect ailing town centres – recently did a whole series on the subject.

Going happily beyond the call of duty, he gives directions to a driver looking for the Long Mynd Hotel and even helps a customer to change the oil in their car.

“A simple smile goes such a long way,” Keiran says.

“People might be having a bad day and it can make a difference.

“If a customer has had a bad day and you smile and have a chat with them it picks them up.”

Of course, like most people, he’s had his own experiences of bad customer care.

“Some people are a lot less interactive these days, I think, and a lot more business-like. Obviously you wouldn’t want to stop people for a chat if they didn’t want one, but you have to adapt to customers.

“I tend to use a lower voice with men and have a softer voice for women.”

It helps, perhaps, that the business has been run by the Reynolds family since 1968. Customers, most of them regulars who know the family and their staff by name and stop for a chin-wag as much as anything else, are clearly happy with the service they get. It’s one of the reasons they come to Longmynd Service Station in the first place.

And in the current economic climate, customer service is one of the key factors in cementing loyalty.

Many drivers say they have had their fill of bad service at other places — including shops, restaurants, pubs and even businesses in the service sector, many of which appear to have lost the personal touch.

As he fills up with fuel, Ian Ward, who works for an international exhibitions company, says: “I come from the South East originally, where nobody has the time of day for you.

“I’ve been working in the Middle East where customer service is excellent, and generally over here we have not got a ‘Danny La Rue’ about customer care.

“You see it every day. I went to a pub and ordered some food; it came and I had to ask for the cutlery. The waitress said – and it’s not her fault, it’s just the way she has been trained by her manager – ‘Oh, it’s over there’, and that was it. But you do consider whether you want to go back to places like that.”

Customer Janet Hall from nearby Longville is adamant about customer service. For the hard-pressed motorist it’s crucial.

“It is important to me,” she says.

“And they are always friendly here, but a lot of shops you go in and you can see it’s just too much trouble.

“I went for a mower in one shop not that long ago and they had not got a clue. The attitude! You think, I’ll get one from somewhere else then.

“Good customer service brings people back. There are other places I could use.”

In glum times, cashier Victoria Rogers has a smile worth travelling to visit. Without being prompted she helps an elderly customer with her fuel and her regular supply of Werther’s Originals.

“Fuel is £27.03 – does that sound about right,” she says.

“And which Werther’s do you want, the soft or the others?”

Of course, the Reynolds family are delighted with their new status as the service station with the best customer care record. But being a family-run concern, founder Bill Reynolds knows it’s they who are the front of house face of their business.

“We do have a lot of regular customers, and we do try to be friendly, and one point is that a lot of members of staff have been with us for a long time. It’s not us, it’s the people selling the fuel that it’s about.

“Service is probably the most important thing, especially in a small community because we don’t do a lot of advertising and a lot of our business is built on our name. It’s all about being honest to the customer.”

By Ben Bentley