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“So what? Are you the first person to buy regularly from us? What makes you special?”
“I am hanging up right now; we will get back to you later.”
“Didn’t you check our telephone directory before calling; is this the procurement department?”
These opening statements, as readers may have known, are familiar retorts from employees of organizations to prospective or current customers, from whom they seek to make sales and earn revenues!
With this background, the importance of good customer service as a core element of an organization’s potential survival was aptly captured in the American Express Survey’s statement that: “…customers are willing to spend 14% more for great service”. In a similar vein, 2014 JD Power Study on US Retail Banking Satisfaction found that “poor customer service was the number one reason customers switched banks.”
Here in Nigeria, aside the corporate theme called “strategy”; arguably the other theme constantly abused by organizations is “customer service”. In reality, it should have been named as the antithesis, “non-customer service”; for lack of a better expression. This unfortunate attitude usually reflected in the treatment meted to customers at/by hospitals, banks, schools, airports, corporate offices, visa processing centres, cable TV firms, mobile telephony companies, etc. Yet, our corporates have created high-sounding descriptions for the good old customer service department in the forms of ‘customer care’, ‘customer experience’, ‘customer excellence’, ‘customer support’, ‘client service’, etc, but they do the exact opposite!
Examples regarding our terrible attitude to customer service in Nigeria are many. Recently, employees of an airline shamelessly engaged their customers in a brawl at the airport in full glare of the public! In the same aviation sector, customers usually got harassed by so-called ‘customer care’ officers, with crude statements such as “Oga, we have done everything from our end, if you like go and book with another airline. Do you want me to kill myself because of your one-way ticket?” This is in addition to gravely debilitating constant delay and cancellation of flights without any worthy explanation, apology, or remediation.
At the restaurant, if you tarried a bit deciding what to pick from the large menu, the employee of the outlet who is supposed to serve you, and on whose patronage the payment of his/her salary is hinged, could retort: “Oga, abeg pick your food fast, I don’t have the whole day to attend to you.”
Or, you could hear a more cynical one: “Next person jare, how could you delay everyone here because of the N2,000 food you wanted to buy?”
In a particular instance, a customer wanted to make a withdrawal at her bank and the teller told her, after an error on the withdrawal slip: “How could you not know that today’s date is June 14?” There is even the more tiresome one, when bank officials give you the ubiquitous line for service failure: “our network is down, come back later.”That excuse is usually given to the customer without any shred of emotion conveying apology and/or suggesting remediation. It is sometimes given in a frame of mind as though the officer was being disturbed by the customer!
Similarly, a prospective customer rings up the official line of a company, having checked it up on their website, seeking to engage an official in the legal department. The front desk officer picks up the phone, and to cut a rather long story short, after a bit of back-and-forth between them, tells the prospective customer: “Isn’t this the receptionist’s desk? Couldn’t you have called the legal department directly? I am busy o, today is Monday; I will end this call in two minutes.”
Even at the work place, for roles with internal (rather than external) customers, you hear people say: “I (we) am (are) working on it”, a refrain I consider as one of the most riling statements in the corporate environment, and which is a sure excuse for “doing nothing.”
In changing the poor service narrative, organizations should change their approach to customer service as a ‘nice to have, everyone-has-it’ department; to a more strategic approach, seeing it as the main gateway for sustainable profitability. In taking the strategic route, ALL employees should be made to see the pivotal importance of excellent customer service to the organization’s existence. When that approach is institutionalized as a culture, indignant employees will shape up or ship out!
Another antidote to poor service is the need to show genuine care to the customer; personalize his preferences, and make him feel loved. Most times, customers only desire the minimum; they wish to be treated fairly as human beings; not as irritants who could be talked down upon, and onto whom venomous anger and derision could be poured at the earliest opportunity.
Further, organizations, rather than focus on perfunctory trainings on customer service, should go deeper and train their staff (especially those at the front desks and service points) on the psychology of service delivery. Through this, employees are trained to put away their personal frustrations (considering the inexplicably combative, angry manner some of them treat customers) and serve customers with a smile and mutual respect, as we often observed in other parts of the world.
Organizations should know that grand advertisement campaigns cannot mask poor customer service and its severe implications. A company noted for having rude employees, who have scant regard for regular or walk-in customers can never deceive the discerning public regarding its fidelity to good service. In fact, they should be aware, if they are not aware already, that ‘word-of-mouth advertisement’, undertaken by an unfairly-treated customer is far more potent than huge outlay on media blitz; just as a modest advertising expenditure accompanied with positive ‘word-of-mouth campaign’ which satisfied customers usually undertake without solicitation, is usually more rewarding and sustainably profitable.
In conclusion, organizations that emphasize offering cheaper products/services accompanied by poor service should note that by proven research, they cannot, in the long run, earn greater profits than competing products/services that are more expensive but which provide excellent customer service. The average customer in Nigeria, and elsewhere, is willing to pay extra (as confirmed by my previous reference to American Express Survey) for being treated or served well, as opposed to paying less for being treated like a brute.
Tajudeen Ahmed
