The Customer has been neglected
It is amazing
how very little attention is paid to the aspect of customer care by a lot of
organisations. While management spends hours on end drafting and crafting
strategies, trying to pave the way forward for their organisations, this very
important aspect is most often forgotten. It is rather ironic that regardless
of what strategies you come up with, the onus at the end of the day rests on
the client /customer, without whom you would have no business.
Just trying to
get a phone call through to some organisations is a nightmare because the
telephone is constantly engaged or no one bothers to answer it, not to mention
the time you have to spend on hold after which you are told that the person you
are looking for is unavailable, before being unceremoniously cut off without
even a chance to ask if someone else could help you. In some instances you are told that the
person you are looking for is not in and upon requesting on being assisted by
someone else, you are rudely informed that no one else except that person can
help you so you just have to try calling them back later. Honestly some of the
things you hear are appalling to say the least. There is a serious need for
organisations to become customer focused and realise that they exist to serve
the customer and going out of their way here and there to please them is
mandatory for organisational success.
A customer can
be external or internal and both are important. The Human Resources Department,
for example, exists to serve internal clients, whom if dissatisfied cannot
carry out their work effectively and this has an overall negative bearing on
the organisation as a whole. So whether internal or external, the least service
you can afford a customer is to please them with efficiency, good attitude and
knowhow of what you are doing.
This concept has
been so widely understood by organisations in first world countries but now has
to be just as equally understood by organisations in Zimbabwe if they are going
to be competing in the big league. This is where customer care courses come in.
For a long time Zimbabwean organisations have gotten away with being rude and
hostile to customers because at the end of the day, it had no real bearing on
organisational performance. Customers had no option for alternative services or
products and in most cases had to swallow down abuse being totally at the mercy
of the service or product provider. Fortunately dollarization has brought with
it customer freedom, where customers can choose, except of course in the case
of parastatals where one just does not have any choice for service provision.
It is these organisations that perhaps need customer care skills the most.
Customer care
courses help to re-orient the employees on what is truly important –customers.
The objectives of these courses are to create a mind shift for employees from
“I am king and this is my domain’’ to “Customer is king and my job here is to
delight them with excellent service.” Employees need to understand that
customer service is not in any way linked to the amount of money they are
getting on the job or how they are being treated by their superiors. This is
often the justification for poor customer service. What we often forget is that
each one of us is at some point a customer or client of someone else, and just
as you do not understand why someone may go out of their way to be nasty to you
a customer who has done nothing wrong except choose them as their provider of
goods or services, is the same confusion that customers face at your hand. They
do not and should not care about your work conditions or that you are not
feeling well or you have just had a fight with your boss. All they should worry
about is that their needs are effectively and efficiently met without any
emotional pain. The fact that you as a service or goods provider are sitting
behind that desk and not at home means you have an obligation to the customer
and are bound to deliver good service with a good attitude.
Employees,
especially customer facing ones need not only to manage their own behaviour but
to understand customer behaviour and how to deal with individual needs. Skills
need to be developed and refreshed to address all aspects of customer service
and understanding customer care standards.
Other organisations
argue that training should be the least on the agenda of things to do
considering the tight cash flows that they are facing. It is true that some
organisations can really not afford to train but for others it is a mere excuse
to make way for “more important” projects. What they forget to realise is that
training is a long term investment if done correctly, one that will reap them
life time rewards. For once an organisational culture of customer excellence is
set; it can be easily perpetuated for as long as long as the organisation is in
existence.
A while back I
wrote about the importance of employer branding and how some organisations
would never get people interested in working for them because they have built
poor brands for themselves. An employer brand is what insiders and outsiders to
the organisation perceive that organisation to be like. Most of it has to do
with customer service. Who would want to work in an organisation in which you
have been treated like trash? Chances are when the name of that organisation
comes up you are quick to point out how terrible they are and this is how an
organisation’s image is tarnished just by word of mouth.
The new age
customer is different, more demanding and more aware of their rights than the
customer of old. Organisations that are aware of this fact are likely to do
better than those that aren’t. It is never too late to make a turnaround for
the better and most often the difference between being great and mediocre lies
in refocusing and letting the customer be the central focus of all business
activity.
Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial
Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting
firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 077 2356 361 or
email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit our
website at www.ipcconsultants.com
