It is becoming increasingly difficult to know what is Nigeria’s biggest ailment. Is it poor customer service which has chased several global businesses into Ghana, Kenya and Ethiopia where there is discipline and a high quotient of customer service? Or is it corruption and advance fee fraud now known globally as “the Nigerian scam” whether or not committed by Nigerians or not?
We have entered the annals of media and international security lexicon with double negatives. Is it unkindness, bad driving or “Imnmadu” (man know man) that will finally be the death of us?
So many things to talk about but let’s stay with customer service today. Swirling all around us is Wadume, xenophobia and other matters arising. We will talk about them in the coming weeks.
I have become so incensed by our customer service failures that my staff and family have started to refer to me as the customer service police. I have often wondered whether it does not bother the rest of us because I am angry when some of these things and fellow citizens think I am crazy or just difficult.
I have held my side because I know that demanding for what is due to you in a customer service space after spending money is a simple request and everyone should feel the way I do with customer service failures.
Sometimes I wonder if it is because I teach it that I can almost feel the receptionist’s indifference or the fact that a clock at an establishment reads the same time be it night or day. Incredible! Be that as it may, I wonder also if it is the fault of the employers as we often like to hire cheap and then fail to train or whether it is in our DNA.
Customer service is so important to corporate bodies these days that it is a critical aspect of global businesses especially if you want your product to effectively travel anywhere in the world.
A world class international airline about three years ago introduced a customer service officer on board, it was pretty surreal to me. This is because most of our domestic airlines hardly care whether the customer is satisfied or not. Apart from ridiculous delays, no one has an answer to simple questions like why did you not announce a delay? No ground crew may even be able to answer your question on the reason for the delay. What about those announcements they make at airports which I have been complaining about long before now?
If we really care about not missing flights and users of our airports, the ladies who make the flight announcements should be removed pronto. They speak in a language other than English. A cross between their local dialect, a bad intonation of English and another cross between patois and pidgin.
While they “kill” you with bad words pronunciations, they are also very high pitched to drive you completely insane.
In the meantime, they have an attitude and consider themselves top level speakers at the airport. Why so? Because, if anyone has any respect for customers, these pretend announcers will not even have the courage to speak to us. I am a trained broadcaster and public speaking consultant and it gets my goat when people are putting up a fake English accent peppered with Amala. If we want to use our local dialects to make announcements at the airport, please let us be aware instead of unleashing a poorly trained, badly spoken, no skills announcer on all of us.
The language of officialdom remains English and irrespective of the field you do business, it must be at least decently spoken.
I went to a restaurant last week and ordered some food for the children at our annual summer writing workshop. A commissioned caterer had failed, so we looked to the nearest restaurant. There were forty-two children and eight facilitators, so I ordered fifty plates of food. I considered this by any stretch of the imagination business for the owners and staff. The food arrived and to my horror, had been served short by almost a quarter.
I then laid my complaint the following week at the end of a tedious but exciting weeklong summer workshop. The waiter at the counter reminded me that the kids could not even finish the food as she had waited on that day and retrieved the children’s plates. As is typical with Nigerian responses to customer service failure, “I was not to complain”. Rather than apologise, she was blaming me for too much food for the kids.
I reminded her that I could well have bought the food and threw it away. It was my money and my decision what I do with it. She honestly wondered what the fuss was about until her manager caused her to apologise.
This is unfortunately the Nigerian way. Pass the blame. Pretend you do not understand a simple complaint. Blame the customer and after sometime when the customer is fed up, they will go away. Indeed, most people get fed up and go away.
Most of our receptionists are nose digging, gum chewing disrespectful persons who know nothing about their brands and don’t care.
How do we get our front desk people to own the businesses, to be passionate about it? This is a million-dollar question. Apart from the attitude of these people, how do we treat them, train them and how do we pay them? Most businesses should close down and revamp else the quarrelsome receptionist who has been ignoring and cannot process you because she is gisting with a visiting colleague from another department who has fully distracted her.
I am concerned more and more by this quality of persons because tomorrow they may be promoted manager of the business. Nothing changes, customer service failure is deepened. This act of brazen customer failure applies to all staff concerned irrelevant of gender.
Finally, I was at an office last week and the receptionist was not there. I had stood there for about ten minutes when the first human being sauntered in wearing a staff tag. He looked puzzled and started walking away. So, I called out and asked him if he worked there. He said Yes, at which point I felt sorry for my country Nigeria. It would have cost him nothing if he attended to me.
As always, inefficient characters keep getting into positions and are being promoted while those with competencies are posted out, sacked or hounded. “Imamadu” Wonder if we drank it in our water. Strange, we were never like this.
EUGENIA ABU
