*Being excerpts from: 50 ways to customer relations and increase customers, a forth coming book by Alex Ogundadegbe.
I’m standing in the hall of the headquarters of Zenith Bank in Accra, Ghana; a friend just went upstairs to see one of the managers. Not long after he leaves, a customer service personnel of the bank walks up to me and asks a simple question: “Sir, are you being attended to?” I am instantly blown away and I offer my thanks with yes and smile as she turns away! I make a mental note to open an account in this bank for as long as I’m in speaking engagements on the West Coast of Africa. Many organizations especially the ones who have good fortunes have lost sight of how important customer service is to the survival and the success of their organization. If the company is doing well we often find a spate of arrogance setting in and making us laid back about customer relations.
On a lift in a Nairobi, Kenya hotel I am chatting with a colleague. The lift is headed for the ground floor where we hope to take breakfast on this cold morning. The other man in the lift watches us and listens to our conversation. Just before we hit the ground floor he analyzes our accents: “You must be West African, either Nigerian or Ghanaian. Right there and then I practice what I teach. The Elevator Pitch; I tell him I am a speaker in key areas of Human Resources Management, marketing and Customer Service should he ever need someone to grace an event or do a keynote for him. I see the interest on his face as a moment of epiphany appears to come through him. Customer Service people need to be able to market their product or service anywhere they find themselves. You never know where the next client or customer will come from.
Employee satisfaction could make employees more productive on the job, in other words, they meet deadlines and often exceed expectations. It could also make them more stuck to their jobs.
At the international airport in Dakar, Senegal, just before going through immigration, an official realizes from my passport that I’m a Nigerian and asks me step into a side room. Before I know it, I’m being interrogated over my mission in Dakar. Quickly I launch into my pitch, telling them what I do for a living and stating to them that I’m in Dakar for a business presentation which lasted a couple of days and has since come to an end. They ask me a few more questions and realize that I also have media connections and decide that it would be rather risky to let me miss my flight back to Lagos. So I’m given the go ahead and immediately head for the lounge where other passengers are waiting to board the flight back to Lagos. My pitch has worked for me yet again. I may not have sold the Senegalese Immigration officers but at least I had an easy and enjoyable time explaining what I do for a living in spite of the veiled contempt I sensed they had for me.
My training in the three key areas of Marketing Management, Customer Service and Human Resources management seem to kick in whenever I find myself in situations where I have to talk to convince people about the genuineness of my intentions. I suppose that is what understanding those concepts is all about. But one thing missing in most commercial environments that I have been to is the attitude of attending to the customer wholeheartedly. I still come across people who lose their temper if you complain about their goods or services. There are still people who treat customers with contempt and look down upon them based on their appearance. We are taught in customer service to treat all customers the same way; with the utmost respect and reverence. At a well known hotel in Abuja a customer is wearing tattered jeans and a casual t-shirt and bathroom slippers and he is looking at some rather expensive watches in a shop in the hotel lobby. The attendant in the shop makes a grave mistake of looking down on the customer and her contempt shows in the way she attends to him. The young man ignores the lady and selects two watches that look like they could be worth at least a year’s salary in some companies. He points to his room upstairs, coincidentally; his room can be seen from the lobby marches up the stairs to the room and in the full view of the shop attendant and some curious bystanders enters his room with bang. Five minutes later he emerges with bundles of cash in his hands and instead of bringing the cash down to pay for his purchase he decides to throw the bundles at the shop attendant from the banister. She got her punishment for being contemptuous. As the lady bends down to pick the cash bundles from the floor, people begin to whisper the identity of the man who cast the bundles down. He is the scion of a very rich Nigerian.
Margret was going through a situation, in her fifties, divorced and not having a great time on the dating scene she was under pressure. She could not explain it initially but a visit to the doctors revealed frightening information from an initial diagnosis. She could be approaching menopause. Margret Darko was General Manager Insight Advertising in a city known as Accra located in Ghana, West Africa. She had sensed that something was wrong but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Then a mental review of the number of arguments she had got into with employees in the past couple of weeks came to mind. She had fired one recalcitrant copy writer and spoken nastily to account manager who had upped and resigned on the spot. What was happening to her? Could her hormones be responsible for the way she was treating colleagues in the office? Already a major client had sent in complaints about errors in phrasing of radio jingles. There appeared to be a threat of losing yet another client. Two had already filed notices of withdrawal a week before.
Margret was in a dilemma. What was to be done? The answer came from the strangest of places: she was leafing through a Customer Care Periodical in a client’s reception while waiting for a meeting when something in the middle of the publication hit her sight. “Customer Service begins from within the company, if you are not treating one another right, it will affect the way you all relate to the people you serve outside of the company”. The sentence sent a shiver down Margeret’s spine. Could she be the problem at Insight?
What you feel inside of the company you translate it to the outside and the customers that come from outside are won over by your conviction, attitude and care.
Customer service starts from within the organization. The theorists call it Internal Service Quality (ISQ). If you and I have cordial relationships with each other and a good rapport during work, it could lead to Employee Satisfaction. Basically employee satisfaction means basic needs are met, delivery and time issues are taken into proper account. Employee satisfaction could make employees more productive on the job, in other words, they meet deadlines and often exceed expectations. It could also make them more stuck to their jobs. The propensity for them to have a roving eye is reduced. So, the ISQ would lead to what is known as External Service Quality (ESQ). What you feel inside of the company you translate it to the outside and the customers that come from outside are won over by your conviction, attitude and care.
ESQ should lead to Customer Satisfaction which promotes loyalty on the part of the customer that comes from outside. Customer loyalty can be measured in the actualization of the three Rs of customer service: Retention, Referrals and Repurchases. If the customer is satisfied he shows his loyalty in these three concepts.
Margret Darko got her epiphany from a magazine publication she stumbled on while waiting to see a major client. But from then onwards she was able to contain what appeared to be a self-inflcited disaster in the advertsing agency she managed. It was time to work on the inside.
*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).
