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I’m getting increasingly frustrated with the lacklustre performance of customer officers in the customer relations spaces across Nigeria. This includes receptionists, front office managers, information officers at hospitality zones and airports and civil servants with responsibility for visitors and outer offices of some chief executives.
Only last week, I went to a private communications company in Abuja. My first observation at the reception in the administrative block was that the chairs were too low for comfort, were cold and distant, and completely unwelcoming. While I understand that reception areas are not necessarily meant for cozying up, there is a certain acceptable minimum standard for waiting areas and these chairs simply did not qualify. To sit down would have required that I stoop so low as to nearly hurt my back. I chose to stand but made a point to the receptionist that her sitting area looked extremely uncomfortable. I also reminded her that it was not a customer care zone, which would usually have traffic but an administrative block which meant that visitors would usually be top level executives or management personalities seeking to see people of like positions in their own establishments. Therefore, the sitting area of such a space should necessarily be more high end. She looked non-pulsed and murmured unintelligibly. But that was not the only problem I encountered. I found that the receptionist was completely uninterested in her work and seemed bothered by my enquiries. She was also very forgetful of my name and position, which I had to keep reminding her of. When I was now fairly fed up of this inefficient receptionist, I asked her to give me a piece of paper to write down my name and my co-ordinates while waiting for my driver to bring my call card. It took the whole of ten minutes for her to literally search for paper in her very noisy drawer which she never found until the call card came. I have difficulty in finding the word to describe the attitude of this receptionist. Is it sloppiness? Is it inefficiency? Is it carelessness? Should this person even earn a salary?
In customer service, your entire image is as good as your front office personnel, their attitude, and their ability to represent a company well. This receptionist failed on all accounts. And although I scored this company average in its efficiency in the past, this encounter alone has now led me to give a five percent score for the company. This is how powerful the reception or customer service personnel are. More often than not, they are not made to understand their power or they are treated badly and feel unimportant to the tasks at hand.
I am therefore at my wit’s end concerning customer service in quite a number of Nigerian companies and I have written many times in this column about it. Why do we have persons willing to apologise for poor service abroad and here they are more likely to shut you down? Why is it that I am still dealing with gum chewing front office staff who look like tarts rather than persons with responsibility for managing visitors to an establishment? Why do some front office staff think they should keep you standing while flirting with an office colleague? Why should a secretary be on the phone with their uncle for all of 15 minutes while you are waiting to be served? Why should an airline consistently cancel its flights without recourse to the passengers? Is it possible that something is wrong with our DNA that prevents us from being courteous to clients, customers and each other?
The hotels are not any different from other customer service space. A month ago, I was a guest at a top level hotel in Lagos. I arrived the hotel tired and tetchy. I found, to my dismay, that the security guys with responsibility for collecting my luggage were completely uninterested in me so I hauled my luggage up the three flights of stairs by myself and they could see me and completely ignore me. In between all of this, I had no dustbin in my room, the bath was dirty and had not been cleaned, Housekeeping forgot to put toilet rolls in my room and the AC was faulty. For my tired bones, this was the limit. I was paying good money, so what is this about? I am literally fed up with getting people to do their customer service duties. As an expert in the field, I have truly had enough.
I do not know about you.
Eugenia Abu
