When was the last time you allowed yourself just for a few minutes to get stressed out in an attempt to do business with a service organisation? It was not your fault if you “flipped off the handle”. I understand, poor customer service drove you to that point. It is more frustrating when you call some organisations and it takes three to five minutes pressing buttons before someone finally comes on the phone and says, this mailbox is full exiting the system, bye.
Doing business with some service organisations often requires you to determine if that organisation has the ability to service your needs. This is one of the reasons why many customers call before they waste their expensive gasoline, give up their limited lunch hour, and has to lie to their supervisor, for being late in an attempt to cover for service providers who do not have a clue about giving customer service attention. Some employees directly or indirectly cause havoc in service organisations. They drive some customers so crazy, and they never come back.
If I start to sound as if I am crazy, I guarantee you I am not. Nevertheless, the level of customer service that we provide as Bahamians in general often has the potential to drive some of us to the “crazy house” and it could be a justifiable reason for customers to take a drink every now and then. No, I do not need therapy but some employees of various service organisations need to be committed. I am spending my hard earn money to pay for a service and I am being totally ignored by persons who I positively contribute to their salaries every Friday or end of the month. Why should customers be left to feel as if they are stupid? Why should customers be left to feel as if they are not important in the mix of things?
In some service organisations, employees treat customers as if they are doing them a favour. Make sure before you leave, do not forget to tip them on your way out. Why should my blood pressure rise? Why should I have to create a scene before someone thinks I am uneducated and do not know better? Why should I have to threaten a bank and tell them I will close all of my accounts before some teller treats me professionally with cordial customer service? Why should I have to walk out of a food store holding my head after shopping for one hour for groceries, when the cashier tells me at the counter, they do not accept a certain credit card. Is it possible to explain this type of behaviour from a customer service perspective? Oh yes! It is called customer service insanity.
Many of us experienced customer service insanity in some way or the other. Some of us had to answer ourselves back to make sure that the experience we had was just a dream. The time has come for us to wake up and get a good customer service life. How many times should customers have to curse us out before we get the method right? How many scenes should we have to experience before it sinks in that we are doing something wrong? Why should customers have to suffer when paying their hard earn money for a service that is deplorable? Now is the time for us to pause and see what we are doing and conclude it just does not make good business sense.
I remember one customer service experience, I will remember for the rest of my life. I was staying at one of our fine resorts during a business trip. I decided that I was going to eat in. This was one of the worst room service experiences I encountered. It took 10 minutes before someone answered the telephone to take my order and 30 minutes before the food arrived. When the food arrived, I was so happy that everything was in order; or at least I thought it was. After the waiter left I inspected the food. I found the following problems: The food felt hot on the outside but was half frozen on the inside. The waiter did not bring me any water, ketchup or serving utensils. If a man could ever have a baby before he ate his dinner, that night came close. The only sane thing I could do was burst out into laughter. So I call room service back and professionally complained about my order. The clerk said he will send the same waiter to resolve the problem. When the waiter arrived, I advised him to take the food back and I gave him my new order. I said, please, when you come back this time bring a steno serving cart and have the food in it. I waited another half-hour and it happened. The waiter brought the food on a tray. This time he brought the food with two personal stenos sitting on a plate and told me that I can keep my food warm for a while. The only thing I could do was smile. Finally, I decided to call room service for the last time. I said, I am one of your corporate clients and I am very dissatisfied with the level of room service and I would like for you to know that I will not be paying my room service bill. The following day I called the General Manager to resolve the problem.
How do we stop the customer service insanity?
* Get It Right The First Time
Working in customer service organisations is not a test tube environment. Often errors and mistakes do happen. Nevertheless, this is not a justification for employees to get a license to kill the customer with poor customer service. Employers must first empower employees to get it right the first time. Employees must be trained to creatively solve and resolve outstanding problems and service issues.
* Establish or Revamp Customer Service Policies
Organisations need to revamp customer service policies. Some policies that are in place today have become archaic. The policy is needed but is not timely or just. Customers today have many choices to do business and unlimited options to pay for services and products. Some service organisations need to establish customer service policies to provide clarity of vision when executing customer service. Having policies in the minds of employees do not benefit customers when they walk into the establishment. Policies should be readable and noticeable to gain the customer’s confidence in the services you provide as well as minimise the complaint factor.
* Develop contingency strategies to avoid customer confrontation
The key to effective customer service take place when organisations develop a contingency plan to avoid customer confrontation. This does not mean that you providing not providing good customer service. It means you are taking other measures to improve the level of customer service that currently exists. It is a tragedy when customers leave a service organisation with their complaint or issue unresolved. Contingency strategies may not be the total solution to the outstanding issues but it provides customers with options to confront the problem.
The information contained in this article are partial excerpts from the following training programmes:
* Principles of Customer Service
* The Power of Teamwork
* Customer Service Management
* Developing Customer Service Delivery Systems
* Developing Customer Service Delivery Management Systems
* Developing Effective Customer Relations
* Customer Relations Management
* Re-engineering Employee Performance
The Nassau Guardian
