It's Never That Serious.......................

Just yesterday I had a very interesting discussion with a new acquaintance (let’s call her Jeanette) who works at the care centre of the country’s only power supply company. She was decrying top management country wide and appealing to them to work out the math and figure out what it takes to provide excellent and timely service.

She was lamenting about the fact that the ratio of technical people to the actual jobs on the ground is disproportionate and vertically skewed. The number of technical people sent out to fix lines, repair transformers, re-plug technical components to reverse outages and fix faults were significantly few in comparison to the daily job list. The ratio of technicians to jobs on the daily assignment sheet was on average 1:20, where one technician was expected to run around different locations working through the assigned list. The technicians when consulted, state quite candidly the stark improbability of completing the tasks within the shift period. Not to mention that during the assignment period, more jobs would pop up requiring attention based on urgency and prioritization, further distorting the list.

“Dialogue is absent.” She bemoaned. “The solutions are here with the people. We know exactly what needs to be done to improve service.”  She further contended. The management had recently proposed to increase the number of call center agents to better handle the increasing flood of customer complaints. “We do not need more agents, we need more foot soldiers running around handling customer issues. The calls will go down, the technicians will be more empowered as they will manage to complete tasks assigned and customers will be happy.” She shared the frustration felt by the call center team and technical team given the daily end of day reports on incomplete assignments.

Her sharing brings to light what many a corporate fail to take up – inward consultant and inwardly seeking solutions. Many invest in hiring consultants and carrying out all manner of ‘analyses’ and yet the solutions lie with the people. The staff on the ground who are in constant contact with the brand and its operations, who continually face the wrath of unhappy customers and who interact with the product or service processes intimately are best placed to advise on what to do to turn things around.

Right there are the ‘consultants’. Consult them. Consult them widely and constantly. Encourage ideas. Reward them even. Staff will be ready, willing and happy to suggest ways to improve operations and to increase efficiency. They will propose solutions for problems both real and anticipated. And if an environment where ideas are encouraged and acknowledged is created, then the motivation to resolve issues will be high. Man’s greatest need is the need to feel appreciated. The need to feel listened to, felt and heard. And if staff have an open channel to express ideas and provide recommendations for improvement, the service turnaround is guaranteed.

So back to Jeanette’s cry…….. If only management would take a walk on the proverbial shop floor and talk to the ‘people’ and spend some time listening, they would find out that what it actually takes to resolve their ever growing problems and increasing customer aversion to them with a call to end the monopoly, isn’t as complicated as they imagine. No earth shattering, bank breaking, organization restructuring solution is required. No. Not at all. Just more technicians. Simple…….

And just as with life, we need to embrace the philosophy that things are never that serious……… they’re just as simple as we make them.

Three Blind Mice - Are Your Customers Groping About In The Dark?

My colleague was hit by a motorbike on Ngong Road this past Thursday and we ended up at the nearest hospital to seek treatment.  I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and sanitary the hospital was. Everything was spick and span and thankfully it was devoid of the dreaded ‘hospital’ smell of carbolic.  I had previously thought this the domain of the bigger and more established facilities. It was refreshing to encounter elsewhere.

We were very well received and requested to fill out forms and have a seat. After about ten minutes a list of names was shouted out from the reception area, my colleague being one of them, and we all trudged after an intern who said ‘Follow Me!”. We were led like sheep through some corridors to a waiting area and ‘dumped’ there with no further instructions. And here began our ‘blind folded’ journey. I say blindfolded because what followed was  a blind process of moving from department to department not knowing what next and at various points having to listen out for one’s name being shouted by the person manning the next station.

We proceed from this first point which turned out to be a triage area to  another waiting bay, then called out  by a receptionist then back to another waiting bay, then called out by the cashier then to another  waiting bay, then called out by a nurse, then seen by the doctor, then to another waiting area, then called out by the pharmacist, then back to the cashier’s waiting area, then called out by the cashier, then back to the pharmacy, then with medication in our hands, back to the doctors station, then to a waiting bay, then back to the doctors station once again then back to a waiting bay, then called up by a nurse to a different room then discharged. Whew! Aren’t you fatigued after reading all this even having not been there? Now imagine the patient who is ill doing this circuit?

And to make matters worse, at none of these stations were we told the reason for waiting there or what to do next. After the first two blind stops, we wisened up and deliberately asked at each point “What do we do after this?” And “Where do we go from here? And “What is the direction to that place?” The officers  we interacted with all looked bothered by these questions. They were already in the ‘next-patient-let’s-get-over-with-this queue’ mode and our questions interrupted their flow.

Patient Journey, Customer Journey, Guest Journey, Journey Journey Journey ……………….. It’s a song we need to sing. For those in the service industry - medical facilities, restaurants, hotels, salons, banks, telcos and any other facility where the customer has to make more than one stop,  it is critical to advise and ensure they  know the next step in their journey. Where possible, provide an escort to that next station. The customers will love it.  Explain to customers exactly what they are doing, where they are going and what to expect next. And the icing on the cake would be to advise the customer the expected waiting time at each stop.

Customers are always hungry for information. Keep them as informed as possible. Let them know what’s happening to them. The ‘three blind mice’ type of treatment doesn’t work. It will take time to explain and the repetitive nature of explaining to each customer will tire out the explainer, but this is good customer service basic need.

The smoothness of the customer journey and managing the customer’s expectations will determine their return or otherwise and determine whether they refer others to the facility or otherwise. And every business requires customer referrals. Customers are the drivers of business. The mathematics is simple. Unhappy customers do not come back and do not refer their friends and family. Customers who get lost in the system are not happy customers. It therefore incumbent upon organizations to tailor their systems and processes to make the customer’s journey easier and to have a service code in place to explain explain explain to the customer the process.

I will not tire of preaching the good gospel of customer education, and I am recruiting followers. Do you suppose I should go back there and look for their customer service manager?

Stop Trying To Delight Your Customers!!!

STOP TRYING TO DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS!!

So screams the headline of an article in Harvard Business Review that analysed the findings of a research study by The Customer Contact Council. It covered more than 75,000 customers on their service interactions across a wide range of industry sectors, where loyalty was defined as the customers’ intention to continue doing business with a company, increase their spending, or say good things about it/refrain from saying bad things. https://hbr.org

This goes completely against the grain of the good gospel of customer service where choir songs are sang about ‘providing delightful customer experiences’, ‘ going above and beyond the call of duty’ and ‘amazing and astounding  customers’. To be blatantly instructed to stop all this is to try and re-write the ten commandments of customer service and to re-wire the hard-wiring of customer service enthusiasts.

However………..

I’ve further examined this ‘alter’ call, and the underlying lesson being pushed is that customers thrive on order, structure, predictability and stability. Now this is familiar territory. Indeed customers thrive on predictability and being able to pre determine what their experiences are going to be. In the hospitality industry for example, one’s favourite restaurant is so because it makes their favourite steak in a certain way always. And the predictability of arriving and requesting the steak and having it placed on the table in the exact same way it always is, is what creates customer loyalty. And this loyalty will increase twentyfold if the favourite steak arrives and the server announces to the customer that it has been done up ‘just the way you like it’. When this customer makes a recommendation or referral to a friend – they know exactly what they are recommending. No surprises.

In the tangible goods and products industry, the consistent look and feel of one’s favourite bathing soap is what keeps them loyal to it year after year. The external packaging may change, but the size of it in their hands, the lathering effect, the smell of it, the feel of it on their skin, the absence of adverse reactions and the efficacy in cleaning is what pulls the shopper to the shop specific shelf year after year. When this customer recommends the bathing soap to friends and family – they know exactly what they are recommending. No surprises.

So…………

Efforts to ‘delight’ customers should be undertaken yes… but over and above delivering exactly what the customer expects. The restaurant for example, over and above providing the expected standard of steak, could provide personalized service that would delight the customer. The soap manufacturer could also, over and above maintaining the consistency of the bathing soap, band together another complimentary item as a free giveaway. These extras are welcome and the delight will be first and foremost from delivering on expectation and secondly from the additional throw-ins.

Customer service efforts therefore should invest largely in establishing systems, processes, procedures and guidelines to consistently deliver on the brand promise. Investment should also be placed on preventing and recovering from service failure, and turning around customer conflict situations to right wrongs and put in place preventive actions. Once and only once this is perfected and streamlined, should commencement work on ‘customer delight’ strategies be instituted.

After all – the intriguing research revealed that loyalty has a lot more to do with how well companies deliver on their basic, even plain-vanilla promises than on how dazzling the service experience might be. We all therefore need to get our priorities right….. right?

Customer Service Standards - Same Cast Different Scripts

I recently had an unfortunate experience with my bank where money was fraudulently withdrawn from my account. The withdrawer seemed to have quite some knowledge of the system for they withdrew the maximum daily allowable amount just shy of midnight and then withdrew the same maximum just after midnight. Shortly after which they attempted a point of sale transaction. As is the case nowadays, text notifications are sent when transactions are done and so I of course much to my shock and horror saw these on waking up, long after the deed had been done.

I called the emergency line indicated on the transaction texts and as this was about five am in the morning, spoke with a quite a sleepy but extremely helpful technical gentleman.  He did all of the following things: empathized deeply with the situation;  tried to explain what could have happened; asked me if I had collected my new chip and pin ATM card; explained why these are a safer option and urged me to get mine immediately; advised that he is blocking my card so that no further attempts could be made; requested that I go into the bank first thing in the morning and report my case; assisted to locate the  nearest bank branch to me; and commiserated with me on my unfortunate circumstance.

Now………. Ultimately when you look at his response, he didn’t do anything out of the ordinary or out of his job description. The technical functionality of what he was to do was done. However, as a result of the way in which he treated me and handled my case albeit over the telephone, left me feeling immediately better, heard, felt and cared for. He served to reassure me massively and I took down his name. Kennedy. I have written to the bank to commend him.

Fast forward into the morning after I arrived at the nearest bank branch as per Kennedy’s advice. My experience there left me quite frustrated and angry. At the bank I was just ‘another’ customer with ‘another’ problem. No empathy, no commiseration, nothing. I was asked to fill in a form, write a statement and wait for them to investigate. On asking how long this ‘investigation’ would take, I was duly informed in a very cursory manner that it on average takes fourty five working days. It was only upon raising my voice and indicating that asking a customer to wait fourty five working days for an investigation in a case where the customer is sleeping in their bed at night knowing that the money they have deposited in the bank whose responsibility is to safeguard it has disappeared as a result of a security lapse was not in order, did I get attention and was requested to check the following week. I took down the name of the person serving me. Her name was Lillian.

Further fast forward into mid-morning when I had now gone to my specific branch to pick up my chip and pin ATM card, still as per the good Kennedy’s advice. On speaking with the teller and explaining why I didn't have my old card to exchange to get the new one and that the branch where I had reported requested for a confirmatory call to authorize its release, he was suitably sympathetic. The nice young man behind the counter made my day: he made sympathetic noises; was suitably aghast that not only was it an attempt, but that the perpetrator succeeded in the withdrawal; empathized at how shocked I must have been; worried for me that I had been set back quite some financially; and comforted me that with the new chip and pin the risk was significantly less. He too served to reassure me massively. I took down his name. Samuel. I have also written to the bank to commend him.

My morning’s experiences served to emphasize the need for customer response standardization. I marveled at how within the same institution, Kennedy and Samuel were very customer centric. Although they did nothing to resolve the fact that my money had disappeared from my account, they were so pleasant to deal with, walked in the customer’s shoes and genuinely showed concern for me. Whereas Lillian, their colleague, handled me just like any other customer in her queue or perhaps, just another one of those customers alleging to be a victim of banking fraud……….

In terms of rank and seniority, Kennedy and Samuel were by far less senior than Lillian, but their customer handling skills were by far superior. I wonder if this experience lends itself to the notion that in organizations, the higher one is in the pecking order the less sensitive they are to customer situations? I am very afraid that this may be the norm and not an exception?

I challenge organizations out here, no matter the size or nature, to have a standardized format for customer responses. Customer’s love order and predictability. They do. And what makes a brand formidable, is that customers know what to expect and then proceed to expect it across all customer touch points.  

It is my intention to talk to the bank management and take them through my experience from a customer’s stand point emphasizing how in my service failure situation, Kennedy and Samuel, still had me smile and feel cared for. It is my hope that they will use this learning to convert the same cast different script situation into the same script different cast going forward. I hope it is not too much to hope for?

Failing to make good on a make good that is a make good for failure!

A former colleague and dear friend copied me on an email to a renowned baby diaper brand that had frustrated him beyond belief. He wanted wise counsel to know if he was truly justified to feel completely put off by the brand’s empty promises.

His story has the makings of the Nigerian soap operas popularly known in these parts as Afro Cinema and has the fine scripting of a dramatic Mexican telenovela. It pains me to not name and shame the brand for behooves a good investigative journalist to get a 360 degree view before exposing the perpetrators.

And so here’s how the story goes…………

My colleague – let’s call him B, attended a Baby fair about two weeks ago with his wife who is expecting and toured the various stall. They were impressed by the presentation and offer by the diaper brand, let’s call them Diaper and bought two big packs. They were very pleased to get an instant reward offer of a bib, a bag and two discount vouchers valid at any Nakumatt Supermarket outlet.

On their way home, they stopped at the supermarket and picked up four more packs of new born diapers and were thoroughly embarrassed at the till when the discount vouchers were declined.  Mr. B then expressed his disappointment on twitter and Diaper’s twitter handled referred him to a Customer Service desk out of the Country. As he didn’t have the time or patience to call out of country he found the feedback page of the Baby Fair organizers and emailed them.

 After two days he received a call from a representative who appreciated his feedback and apologized for the situation. She then proceeded to offer a make good gift and requested that he pick it up after two days. The same day in the afternoon he received another call from a sister company and a different person apologized for the same situation and went on to tell him that they wish to send an apology basket to and requested his home address. She also took the opportunity to advise that they have a home delivery service for diapers, and Mr. B who was pretty excited to hear this promptly let Mrs. B know.

He then sent a message to his first caller to let her know that yet another caller had called and that he would now not go to pick up the basket as caller two would have it delivered. Caller one thanked him and wished him a good day.  He also received a pleasant apology email from a different person representing the brand that took responsibility for the error and informed him that they had righted the voucher situation.

Let’s just say that this is where the excellent customer service took a nose dive!

Mr. B subsequently followed up on five different occasions and received varying feedback ranging from the contact person is on leave, is busy – please call back later, will call him back( and never did) and wasn’t available to take his call.

This got him thinking varied thoughts; one that the apology had been taken back; two that the offer of a gifts was to bamboozle him; three that they had taken a stance to ignore him until he goes away; four that they thought he was absolutely wasting their time; five that they thought he’s not patient enough for their taste; and lastly that they thought he’s nagging them and wished that he would just leave them alone!

He further inferred a couple of things: one that it was by far the worst apology he’s ever received; that their wish to ignore him until he went away was granted for he’d decided to leave the matter alone; that they would scour the market for another diaper provider; that if they’d rescinded their apology that was alright – he’d donate the diapers bought and look for a substitute; if he’d done something to warrant the mal treatment he’d apologize and still go away; and that he was duped by the nice apology until the real colours of the brand showed up after!

He took the time to let them know all this in the email that he roped me into.

Being the customer service enthusiast that I am, I marveled at this service failure wonder and also took the time to respond to the brand reps to let them know that this made fantastic fodder for a case study of a brand chasing away customers at top speed into the laps of their competitors. I also took to social media to let the brand and the world know that it is indeed quite the phenomenon for a make good to failure to materialize as a make good for a make good situation. This by any customer service standards is the rock bottom.

Mr. B and his wife felt embarrassed, frustrated, bruised, battered and trampled upon by the brand. How can a brand succeed in eliciting this level of emotional disengagement from a customer? At the very least the customer should feel disappointed right? Should a brand surely cause a customer embarrassment????

Let’s just say that after that email – someone miraculously appeared in Mr. B’s office with a gift hamper which he promptly turned down. It was never about the gift he emphasized. The regional headquarters has also immediately responded on Twitter requesting that they are really apologetic about the matter and would like to see what to do to resolve it. The local office also quickly got in touch to have a further conversation where the CEO himself has promised to have a meeting with his staff and get in touch with Mr. B.

The questions that abound as always are

• ·         Does it have to get this bad for brands to respond to customer needs?
• ·         Don’t brands appreciate the need to respond immediately to service failure to turn it around?
• ·         Does the customer need to be left with such an acrid taste in their mouths to then shout to feel heard?

What will it take for brands to realize that their biggest and most effective brand and marketing tool is the voice of a happy customer. And even more so the louder voice of a customer whose issue has been resolved and has been turned into a raving fan?

To all out there in the customer service fraternity – we have our work cut out for us!

For now, I wait to see what the ending to this Afro-Cinema/Mexican Soap will be so that we may pen in the script ending……………………

The Power of 'YES?'

This is not an inspi-motivational call to action to have you say YES we can or whatever other positive mantra goes with the thoughts that accompany such calls. Far from it………. It is a call to action to NOT say YES to customers.

A colleague who runs a very popular African restaurant at the new departure terminal at the airport shared yesterday about a South African gentleman who came into her restaurant early the previous morning. As he approached the counter, she greeted him and asked how she could serve him. His first exasperated exclamation was “Why can’t everyone be like you? How is it possible that two adjacent eating facilities can be so different?!”

On further enquiry, what had infuriated her customer was that at the neighbour’s eating house he’d first gone to, the person at the counter on his arrival there had looked up at him and said ‘YES?’

Now………….

Whilst this may not seem catastrophic, and many a person will think her customer, let’s call him Mr. Yes had overreacted, it actually represents a very big customer service no –no. I personally have such a pet peeve against being greeted/met/accosted/hit with the word YES. I have in fact taken to saying NO right back anytime a service provider behind a counter, booth or shop table says ‘YES?’ to me. What is ‘YES?’ What is the customer supposed to respond once you ask them ‘YES?’ For it is unfailingly used in questioning form.

Good customer service dictates that we must greet our customers as an opening line. Good morning/afternoon/evening or hello, or greetings, or hi, in as far as the prevailing circumstance orders and depending on the formality of the situation. It doesn’t matter what is going on or not going on, greeting the customer first we MUST.

I’ve analysed this ‘YES?’ that service providers are fond of saying on first contact and it directly translates to ‘What do you want?’ and in some instances it translates to ‘Next?’ especially where there exists a queue. Why would you want to greet your customers like this? Why would this be the first thing that comes out of your mouth to a customer and we know only too well that first impressions count and last forever?

I get so irked by this ‘YES?’ business that after I proceed to tell whoever’s assaulted me with it( ok I exaggerate, but isn’t that just what it is?) ‘NO’ in response to their ‘YES?’, I further proceed to deliver a quick lecture on the atrocity of their belting out ‘YES?’ to customers. And yes, my friends and family get quite annoyed with my insatiable need to deliver these lectures all the time and often implore me to let it be. But no – the customer service enthusiast in me refuses to sit still and let the YES sayers carry on.

And so back to Mr. Yes story. So delighted was he with the greeting and welcome he received, that he had one tiny cup of English tea that cost round about Kshs. 200/- and left my friend who was his waitstaff for the day a tip equivalent of Kshs. 5000/-

Fancy that? How about this incident as a true example of the power of greeting? It behooves us as service providers in whatever enterprise to inculcate a greeting culture in our establishments. If for nothing else, it is good manners and has the direct potential to contribute to the institution’s bottom line.

Yes go ahead and ditch the ‘YES?’ and greet the customer standing in front of you………. It pays J

Great Brands Thrive on Service Excellence

This article first appeared in Management Magazine September 2014- a Publication of Kenya Institute of Management 

Management and service experts alike have for a long time believed that customers define brands. But things have changed. According to Shep Hyken, customer service expert, business speaker and New York Times bestselling author “Customers may define your band, but employees are your brand.”

Powerful brands are so because they consistently keep their promises to their customers. And very simply put - that’s what customers like – unfailing consistency. That they will beyond any reasonable doubt find the same product they have always found or the same service they have always enjoyed in the same way every time.  That's what customers get emotionally attached to. The UK Intellectual Property Office, charged with keeping custody of brands’ rights, indicates that a brand is much more than a trade name, symbol or identity, but can also be a ‘promise of an experience’ that conveys to consumers a certain assurance as to the nature of the product or service they will receive and also the standards the supplier or manufacturer seeks to maintain. 

The common thread running throughout all these definitions and statements revolving around brands is that consistency and maintaining standards is the name of the game; service excellence consistency and service excellence standards – and there’s no doubt about that. It therefore follows that the all-important question to be answered  is  - What  would it take towards purposefully and intentionally creating a winning brand on service excellence, that would have an organization’s name associated with the value its customers derive from it consistently?

Formidable brands are created by people.

Brand promise delivery is through excellent customer service. A promise is made and customers’ expectations are raised, that the particular product or service will deliver on this promise. What’s relevant to a customer isn’t what the organization values about its products or services, but what the product or service can do to solve the customer’s problems. Understanding customer needs, anticipating their objections and exceeding their expectations are the key tenets around which exceptional service excellence revolves. Dynamic brands that have latched onto this formula think about their customers as the center of their focus and rally their product development and service enhancement teams around delivering first class experience. Many an organization has succumbed to the folly of reflecting  inwards to provide to customers  outputs based on what they think the customer wants or  needs to know, rather than packaging their givings as winning ‘solutions’

·         Emotional decision making 

“What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love”  This quote by Seth Godin - author, entrepreneur, marketer, and public speaker  points directly at the  irrational thoughts that make brands what they are. Warm feelings towards brands are created by; the people that deliver the brand promise; actualization of the brand messaging that promises to provide the customer the solution for which the brand was created; and interaction with the values that the faces and hearts behind the brands epitomize. Winning brands get that way by decidedly worming and working their way into the hearts of their customers. They aim for the effect that when the brand name is mentioned, it evokes a feeling of friendship, warmth, value and partnership. The 2013 research ‘From Promotion to Emotion’ by The Corporate Executive Board Company reveals that despite our(customers) attempts to make purely rational decisions, we are primarily driven by emotional motivations. Dynamic brands have tapped into servicing these emotional needs with excellence.

·         Customer centric processes and systems 

A brand’s continuous improvement is dependent on customer feedback that directly feeds into innovation and dynamic structuring and restructuring of business procedures, policies and practices. Listening to the voice of the customer (VOC) and using the inputs to tweak operations is the secret ingredient to successfully delivering service that wows the recipient. Wow service produces great brands.

Apple-Apple Inc. - the world's most valuable brand in the Omnicom Group's "Best Global Brands" 2013 report declare “We are at our best when we deliver enriching experiences. What we tell our staff: Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome: Make sure customers are greeted by a friendly smile, Probe politely to understand the customer’s needs (ask closed and open-ended questions), Present a solution for the customer to take home today, Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns: By truly listening and acknowledging the needs of your customers, you make your business an oasis of encouragement, empowerment, and excitement. End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return: There is a direct correlation between how people feel when they leave your business and how likely they are to return or recommend the experience to someone else.”

Tucked into this philosophy is a clear customer focused system to listen, understand and act accordingly. The process for handling customers has clearly been outlined to staff who know the what, where, how, when and why enriching experiences need to be created. Walking in the customer’s shoes spurs system audits to observe the customer experience whilst interacting with the organization. If customer excellence temperatures are measured at each customer touch point in the customer journey as they engage with the brand, it is inevitable that enhancements will be made to optimise the experience.

Tied closely to this is the emphasis that international quality management systems place on the customer. The most popularly implemented 1SO 900:2008 Quality Management System has an entire chapter clause 5:2 dedicated to focusing the organization’s quality processes towards serving customer needs.

“Quality is never an accident, it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives”. William A. Foster

Is "Pain - Free" The New Excellent?

“Sue them!” I recently advised one of my clients who has a constant complaint about the service levels from his bank. After listening to his latest ‘Agony Aunt’ lamentations that I thought I‘d just about had enough of, I felt that indeed it was time to take action. The bank handles his organization’s account which in my view qualifies him as a priority customer based on the transaction levels and amounts.

In this particular instance the bank’s money wiring system had some ‘technical’ problem that had taken two days to sort out. This had grossly interfered with his ability to wire salaries to his staff in the region. And him being CEO of a company that’s takes pride in honouring payment dates, was loathe to explain to his people that a technical hitch would delay their pay. The only practicable solution necessitated that he and his finance officer, go into the bank, withdraw the entire amount and deposit each staff’s salary individually into their accounts to ensure these were immediately reflected.

Listening to his annoyed proclamations, mulling over the inconvenience of abandoning our strategy session and the thought of the impending exercise that involved him spending a significant amount of time in the banking hall undertaking manual tasks to achieve the desired objective – I was quite appalled. I requested him to compute the man-hours he had already spent following up with the bank and the hours that would be spent in the bank both by himself and his finance officer and to nicely ring that up and send it to the bank with a letter from his lawyer.  All this would have been completed by the automatic click of technology, and is the reason for which he signed up for the automatic salary transfer system.

What for me what the wringer, the straw that broke the camel’s back, was that all this back and forth, discussions being held and his interaction with the bank over this matter was through the bank’s call center. One would have imagined that this kind of malfunction from a bank of high repute would have his phone inundated with calls from the bank manager or some other such important person in the bank’s pecking order apologizing profusely for the problem and seeking to see how best to make good. This call center experience involved during many instances, an auto response informing him that all the call center agents were busy at the time and that they would get to him ‘as soon as possible’.  He’d made several attempts to get through with the calls truncating mid the waiting period. His frustration was palpable.

I wondered out loud to myself and to him – who exactly should be responsible for bearing the costs of these calls? Doesn’t it behoove a service provider who offers a help desk or call center service for clients, to have some software that identifies incoming calls, how long the person has been on hold and the specific customer profile of the caller? This would then enable an auto response for priority level customers that the provider would get back to them and then have an agent actually do so?

In my then very justice seeking and indignation on his behalf demanded that he compute as well the cumulative time he’d spent making calls including the attempted calls to the bank, and the opportunity cost based on other important things he’d have been doing at the time, ring up that bill as well and serve it hot right along with the earlier billing in the letter the lawyer was going to submit.

Why would we as service providers not provide systems and processes that are customer centric and that focus on providing a smooth, hustle free experience for our customers? Customers are very simple people. All they want is quality, consistency and practical solutions for their needs. That’s all. They do not need bells and frills and belly dancers sent to titillate their senses – ok ok once in a while they’d love that too – but not as a typical occurrence daily…..

 Customers stay loyal to organizations who serve up pain free processes. So much so that pain-free is the new ‘excellent’.  We are so used to problems,  used to things that don’t work,  used to false promises and ‘technical  hitches’ such that when what should actually be the norm happens, we record it in our ‘excellent’ rating scale.

So given that the bar isn’t set so far beyond reach in terms of eliciting customer loyalty, doesn’t it follow that we should at the very least ease our customers’ pain? Because soon enough their  pain will be painful enough to have them ‘monetize’ their pain levels and the legal ‘pain’ that will follow  will not be well worth the pain of having not eliminated the original pain in the first place.

Here’s wishing you and your customers a pain- free week ahead J

Customer Service Investment - Capex or Opex?

Excellent Customer Service, the much touted ‘must –have’ that every organization desires attributed to them, and every leader irrespective of profession or economic orientation is anxious to have as one of their achieved deliverables, is indeed just that – a ‘must-have’.  But beyond being a nice item on the organization or leadership wish list, what sort of investment are organizations ready and willing to make to transform this dream into reality?

A recent 2013 research study by The Institute of Customer Service in Kenya on ‘The State of Customer Service in Kenya’ reveals that ‘whereas leadership within organizations are cognizant of the need for superior customer service as a brand differentiator, the actual tangible investment in customer service is negligible and in want of corporate commitment in the form of budgets, structures, goals, systems, capabilities and robust assessment methods’.

Where then does customer service investment fall in the finance sheets of an organisation? Who is responsible for the budget creation and implementation of the budget action plans? Who is kept awake at night thinking about the next best way to delight the customer? And most importantly what sort of investment is Customer Service? Does it fall in the Opex budget and form a line entry for operational costs to keep things moving, or does it fall in the Capex budget as a heavy investment required to provide an input into the business for which return on investment will be reaped over time?

Stephen Walden – Senior Head of Consulting and Research at Beyond Philosophy, indicates that the biggest challenge facing the customer service industry is how to link Customer Experience to financial value. The leadership of most organisations demand a demonstration of the return on investment before any customer experience programs pass budget stage or if in place, get implementation approval.

How does one create a distinct equation between a brand’s emotional engagement with customers and an upward spike in the organisation’s bottom line? Is this an achievable KPI that can be tangibly tied to customer experience activities? Whatever one’s line of business, whatever one’s leadership style, whatever sector of the economy an organisation lies, the undeniable common denominator is that customers drive business. And the direct spin off of that, is that happy customers drive business further and faster. Happy customers in this context are customers that are emotionally aligned to the brand and are unshakably loyal to it. Creating this level of emotional engagement demands delivery of delightful customer experiences, having consistent quality of products and services, having the organisation’s ear to the ground to anticipate, meet and exceed customer expectations and most importantly, acknowledging service failure if and when it does happen and instituting make good and service recovery mechanisms diligently. This is the not-so-secret formula to business success.

Does all of the above require proper strategy, planning and execution? Does investment in customer service excellence require assiduous budgeting and resource allocation? If indeed business and personal success is a key objective, then the big debate should revolve around if customer service is an operational cost given its now apparent importance as an ingrained element for every day success, or if it is a capital expenditure, planned and planted to reap sustained benefits over time. I leave this crucial debate to all you professionals. Do let me know the outcome of your discussions.....

Customer Retention - Are You Still Loyal To Your First Love?

                                                        This article first appeared in Business Mind Africa Issue 005/2014

“The secret formula for business success is the concept of creating a rabid tribe of followers and fans. It is undeniably effective that if you can turn your customers into raving evangelists, you have an unpaid sales force out there spreading the word about you” Maria Ross

On every CEO’s dashboard, irrespective of the size of the organization, be it a start up, an SME or a blue chip firm, are the bottom line numbers that reflect the company’s financial health status. Central to their planning and what keeps CEO’s awake at night, is how to connect the dots and influence the company’s performance positively.  What reaction therefore is expected when presented with a cost-free solution to spike results? What right thinking CEO wouldn’t step closer towards a proposal that delivers ‘priceless’ results?

In the wise words of Maria Ross, happy customers are an organization’s best friend. In the growth cycle, when organizations are starting up, their bid to draw customers and develop a reputation for excellent service is high.  Employees have a clear understanding that each customer interaction translates to the growth and sustainability of the organization. As such, concerted efforts are placed on ensuring the customer experience is seamless.

Fast forward into the next stage where the same organization transitions into a midsized business, well on its way to becoming a significant corporate. The general consensus from customers who started off with them is that the business has ‘forgotten’ those that supported them when they needed the support most. This is typical of corporates from both  manufacturing and service delivery, and unless a specific focus is placed on enhancing customer loyalty, the very tribe of rabid followers that served as evangelists, may very well convert into sources of damaging word of mouth reviews that could halt a business in it tracks.

How does a business then protect itself from slipping and forgetting the people that matter the most? How does a corporate avoid a decline in customer service when growth takes off?

Ultimately speaking – an organization is only as good as its employees. A culture of customer service excellence must be deliberately grown and maintained.  It is imperative that training, retraining, culture awareness programmes and inculcation of the organization’s vision, mission and values are conducted.

Loyal employees who have the organization’s values, aspirations, hopes and dreams deeply rooted, should be diffused to new branches, outlets and geographies to ensure standards and work ethic are upheld. This has the twofold benefit of creating new inspired team leaders as well maintaining brand standards.

Recently on a social media page with a membership of over ten thousand mothers, a disgruntled customer posted about the decline in customer service at a popular coffee house chain that has rapidly expanded with over 15 branches country wide. Needless to say the conversation thread was very long, with many unpleasant narrations. There general consensus was that people should patronize other brands.  This is the unfortunate folly of rapid expansion without a robust and dynamic customer service strategy.

It is acknowledged that indeed knowing every customer by name and having deep and close knit relationships would pose a challenge when the customer base grows significantly. However, the things that matter most including making them feel appreciated, rewarding loyalty, seeking feedback and responding to needs, are critical irrespective of organization size. Customers want consistency and predictability. They want to know that service levels will be the same consistently and consumers need to be engaged at all levels.

A case study in point is the Nakumatt supermarket chain. A business that is on record for rising from very humble beginnings to being a retail brand powerhouse. With over 40 branches, there is positive customer feedback about the quality and consistency of service. At the South C branch opened recently, I was pleasantly surprised to see staff from the older branch on Uhuru Highway, leading the teams and even more pleasantly surprised that a familiar face hailed me in greeting and requested for feedback on the new unit. Very impressive. So impressive is this chain’s focus on being in touch with the customer that they have launched a customer call center to attend to customer needs. Now that is a customer focused business from whom crucial lessons should be learned.

Today’s customers have very high expectations and the onus is on every organization to develop and maintain steps towards creating customer delight. There’s really no secret to customer service success. The answer’s pretty simple - Listen and Learn.

Back To Failure Kindergarten..................

There are numerous inspiring and comforting quotes on failure, how great it is to fail and how failure is not failure but actually a stepping stone to success. Without fail( pun completely intended)every inspirational biography and autobiography we read, of great men and women who have transformed lives by the works of their hands and who've shifted dynamic milestones, is rife with stories of how these icons have fallen many times, picked themselves up, dusted off the debris clinging on and forged forwards. Every motivational speaker be they on the pulpit, podium, dais, lectern or platform, sings the same song – of the beauty of rising from failure like the lady of the lake at dawn in the Welsh folk tale.

When  Ralph Waldo Emerson says ‘The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall and Bill Gates says ‘It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.’ They mean exactly that. And we so often preach the good gospel of their messages.

Now let’s get out of the time warp of all things good theory and reflect on what happens in reality. What reaction do we have when an employee in our organization makes a fatal mistake that: costs the company losses in millions of shillings or dollars; makes a service delivery blunder that causes brand damage to the organization and results in negative publicity; impacts on a high net worth value customer in the close circles of the CEO’s buddy list?

In a recent training session, the reaction from a group of senior customer experience managers was that ‘heads would roll’. It was definite. There was no discussion around it. It was a given. I have since conducted a small poll amongst my colleagues in industry around the globe and the verdict is watertight. That consequences would follow and these consequences would not dressed up as an opportunity to look back at the mistake, determine root cause and learn from it, but rather as consequences that ‘teach’ the entire organization that mediocrity will not be tolerated.

Well……….if one is logged as a serial and habitual mistake-maker, then coming down hard is not an option but a mandatory next step. However, if one makes a genuine mistake then should we not take a step back, do root cause analysis, learn from the findings and move on, richer for the experience?

The current punitive culture severely erodes the gains slowly being made in the customer service industry. When staff are too fearful to report their mistakes, terrorized by the thought that they may lose their jobs or be subjected to some ‘head rolling’ disciplinary measures, they would much rather keep mum about it. And because there’s comradeship in error, fellow colleagues happily aide the ‘culprit’ cover up the ‘crime’ seeing as to it, they may be the next offenders. And so the vicious cycle continues. Genuine mistakes do not get assessed, the source of the service failure does not get analyzed and corrective and preventive action goes un-instituted. And yes you guessed right - the bearer of the brunt of all these non-happenings is the customer, who experiences the unresolved process or people issues over and over again.

We need a complete culture change – starting from top leadership. Where genuine mistakes are truly viewed as learning opportunities and where service failure is embraced as useful feedback in the business loop. We need to move away from thinking of staff who make mistakes as perpetrators of crime but as victims of our systems, processes, procedures or transactions gone bad that need rework. We need to extend this thinking across business and have leaders champion the cause of truly embracing failure with open arms. No matter the gravity of the mistake, if it is established that indeed a genuine mistake has been made, then subsequent reactions should angle towards learning.  There’s an anonymous quote about customer complaints being the school book from which we learn. If we embrace this school of thought, we should all be sporting PHD degrees by now.

It may be a long journey ahead to create transformation in this area for it is natural for leadership to strike out and ‘deal’ with offenders. But as clichéd as it is, every journey indeed begins with the first step and recognition of the lack in this area is already a big step forward. As we regroup to re-programme and recalibrate to hardwire the national thinking towards espousing genuine failure, we need to soberly internalize the wise words of Colleen Barrett – President South West Airlines, whose biggest pain point is a foul attitude far that far outweighs mistakes…………..

“We’re looking for people who take the business seriously, but not themselves. A sense of humor is a must. And we look for people who were raised on values like the golden rule….we’re a very forgiving company in terms of good honest mistakes, but we’re not at all forgiving about attitude and behavior and demeanor.”

Unshakable Marriage Partners - Vision 2030 and Customer Service

                                                                         This article first appeared in Commerce & Industry Magazine Vol 2 - 011 

In the popular condensed version of Vision 2030 that provides an insightful summary of the bigger draft, the captivating preamble introduces Vision 2030 as the country’s development blue print that aims to transform Kenya into a newly industrializing, middle income providing a high quality life to all its citizens by 2030.

This begs the question, and very rightfully so, about what exactly ‘a high quality of life’ is. What is a high quality of life? Is this a subjective promise? Would the definition of high quality vary amongst, low, middle and high level income groups? How is this quality of life measured? Or in this case to be measured?

The document goes further to say that Vision 2030 was developed through an all inclusive and participatory stakeholder consultative process, involving Kenyans from all over the country as well as local and international experts. By just looking at this development strategy, this blue print for the country is a document of repute and indeed has received worldwide acknowledgement. 

From a customer service angle, every tenet of service excellence has been well covered in its preparation: The outcome of quality is central to the plan; an all inclusive approach of top-down and bottom–up consulting was undertaken to listen to the voice of the ‘customer’ - here being the citizen; and consultation with experts in industry to adopt best practice was done. This would therefore presuppose that the outcome of such fantastic piece of literature would be the high quality of life touted in its mission right?

The economic pillar aims to improve the prosperity of all Kenyans, the social pillar to build a just and cohesive society and the political one to realize a democratic system founded on issue based politics that protects freedoms and respects the rule of law. If we take just this small excerpt and present it on its own, it is very easy to pick out the all the key words that form the basis of excellent customer service delivery. Improvement – this is an integral focus of excellent service delivery – to listen to customers and improve processes and services continually; Just and cohesive – this is the central focus for customer satisfaction – that organizations at whichever level are just and fair to their customers, deliver on their promises at all levels; cohesiveness is aligned to listening and seeking feedback and including ideas, thoughts and feedback;  and finally respect – without which excellent customer service is impossible. The rule of thumb is to have a deep respect for internal and external customer and to respect one’s business to the extent that one’s brand is associated with service delivery. Vision 2030 is a well articulated piece that businesses can use as a skeleton to flesh out and adapt to their unique needs. With this analysis, it justifies the boldness to assert that the Vision 2030 document should be on every CEO’s desktop alike.

Although every aspect of Vision 2030 needs to be built on the firm foundation of great customer service, some aspects of the foundations contained therein require a little more emphasis on the need for a solid service excellence strategy to deliver on the goals. One of these is the foundation on human resource that seeks to create a globally competitive and adaptive human resource base that can meet the requirements of a rapidly industrializing economy. It is important for the entire human resource distinction to understand the value of the internal customer and seek to have service standards raised by having a customer centric workforce.

The foundation on security that focuses on keeping society free from danger and fear requires a police and judicial prison service that is reformed. All these sectors have recorded in history and continue to record some of the worst practices in customer service and require a constant and dedicated effort to turn things around.

The public service arena has seen tremendous improvement in leaps and bounds with regards to service delivery to the citizen. The three Huduma centers that are already in service in the different counties, and the ones in the process of implementation are moving the Vision 2030 foundation of having an efficient, motivated and well trained public service that is citizen-focused and results-oriented closer from theory to reality. There is still however quite a bit of work to do to have citizens recognize their rights to efficient public services and to demand for outstanding service from public institutions.

To achieve the outlined dream of making Kenya one of the top 10 long-haul tourist destinations in the world, our hospitality industry needs to raise the bar. The country is already doing quite well on provision of high quality service for international tourists. The same needs to be projected to domestic tourists, as it is a well known fact that word of mouth is the biggest seller and what a powerful sales force Kenya would have if the entire population 40 million were brand ambassadors, singing songs of praise?

And finally, there’s the old adage that ‘a healthy nation is a wealthy nation’.  Is there really need to put any more emphasis on providing patients with health services of high repute? In October 2013 the Ministry of Health launched The Kenya National Patients' Rights Charter. An excellent document intended to inform and educate patients on their rights to excellent health services that covers all aspects of healthcare from basic to tertiary level. With these kinds of brilliant initiatives already in place, Vision 2030’s pull towards an efficient and high quality health care system that provides the best standards is actually taking excellent shape.

In the second annual progress report on the implementation of the First Medium Term Plan(2008-2012) of Kenya’s Vision 2030 from the Monitoring and Evaluation Directorate in the Ministry of State for Planning, National  Development and Vision 2030, many major, medium and minor gains have been outlined as well as areas for improvement. It is our assertion that all implementation projects towards the achievement of Vision 2030 and the key players involved in leading this strategy, should lean on the backbone of customer service and have this consciousness imbued in all undertakings. Should this customer focused mantra optimistically be taken up, then the 2^nd Medium Term Plan progress report that will cover the period  2013 – 2017 promises to hold transformational results.

Let’s all toot the customer service horn towards this project and have it shift from a blue print to the promised ‘high quality of life’.

Your customers should NOT be your Guinea pigs

Whilst conducting team building facilitation for a customer this weekend, the need for internal customer service came out strongly as one of the key tenets of nurturing a strong team. In the process of wrapping up the debrief form various activities, I asserted that it is not in good order to use your customers as Guinea pigs. If it is indeed a corporate’s desire to upscale their customer service standards and offer exemplary customer service experiences   to their customers, isn’t the age old adage ‘practice makes perfect’ highly applicable?

And hot on the heels of this is the question – where does one practice? Where does one perfect their art? Where does one start to follow through on Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule http://gladwell.com/outliers/the-10000-hour-rule/ ?

Whereas leadership and mainstream staff may not be too in touch with the value of the return on investment on internal customer service programmes and initiatives and the systems to measure this still a touch and go affair, what’s pretty clear to them is that an organization’s commitment to customer service pays dividends in terms of patronage and loyalty.

So……………….if practice makes perfect and we’d like to perfect our customer service skills, where do we practice? Doesn’t it naturally fall in place that we are our own best ‘test drive’ candidates? Our colleagues are easy, accessible and readily available targets for target practice at the firing range to get our ‘bulls eye’ skills perfected yes? It therefore behooves us to practice our business etiquette, emotional intelligence, synergy, win-win, really listening, negotiation and service failure recovery skills in the workplace right?

Imagine an organization where internal phone calls are picked with dignity, problems are resolved with a win-win attitude and team members uphold each other and support each other to provide service delivery with a smile to their other team mates. Wouldn’t this be the epitome of greatness from within? These teams wouldn’t need prompting or to put in effort to transfer this same experience to external customers, for it wouldn’t be an alien practice, but an extension of their ‘way of being’.

The rousing call right away is to determine what your organization’s ‘Way of Being’ is and practise like crazy internally to deliver seamless customer delight always………….

Communication – the root of all customer service evils?

Yesterday I erroneously sent airtime credit to a wrong party. I quickly got in touch with the call center of my Telco service provider, told the care agent what had happened and requested assistance. She duly informed me that they are unable to auto reverse credit sent erroneously to another party and could only do so if the said party sent back the credit which would then be pushed back to my money service account from where it exited.

I was quite stumped because in the last month, this Telco has gone all out to make  a grand announcement on all platforms that it had responded to customers’ pleas and requests and had finally cracked the solution to reversal of erroneous airtime credit transfers.

The care agent made empathetic noises at me, asked if I knew the person I had sent the airtime to and advised that I call them and beg them to send it back to me. I was utterly perplexed. I had taken keen note of the grand announcements that came with pomp and glory, having been a victim of sending airtime to strangers out of my carelessness.

I decided to send a tweet to their online technical team asking when a solution would ever be found. The tech team responded immediately indicating that auto- reversal of airtime was possible. I tweeted back and asked them to quickly advise before the recipient of my airtime gobbled it all up. After half an hour passed with no response, I called the call center again and spoke with a different call agent who was surprised that I had initially been told it wasn’t possible. This agent took details and promised a reversal within 12hrs on condition that the recipient hadn’t tampered with it.

The space of time between my initial call and this positive response call was a record one hour forty five minutes. Sufficient time for an ill meaning party to quickly dispense off with the credit L

So here’s what I marveled about…….

Here is a blue chip company, investing millions in ad placements to make grand celebratory announcements about a process that the call center agent is unaware about? What could have caused this breakdown in communication? How is it that an agent (or who knows how many?) is not aware of this latest development. This interface is the face of the organization! The first port of a call and the first contact with customers! Could the communication chain have been broken along the line? What happened?? Isn't it a no brainer that all pertinent persons should have this info at their fingertips?

Needless to say, this interaction left me with the perception that the brand has loopholes and that communication or the lack thereof is not streamlined despite it being a highly digitized and technical corporate.

Communication about products, services, changes to procedures, latest developments and frequently asked questions is critical for frontline staff. Brand and product knowledge is what serves to position a corporate as highly efficient or otherwise. Customers are hungry for information to make informed decisions. A highly informed workforce does the trick. Right from the so called back office staff to the customer facing staff – everyone from top down should be walking product and service catalogues. Investment should be made in creating internal awareness for immediate return on investment. It is correctly posited that an organization’s first marketers and brand ambassadors are its workforce.

Quick question at this point – are corporates making provision for internal staff awareness programmes in both budgetary and time allocation terms? If yes – then the high road of success draws nigh, if not then it makes good food for thought and action.

Back to my airtime circus – I have just received a text from my provider indicating that the recipient has already spent the airtime and they are unable to refund it as it falls short of the entire amount transferred. I rest my case. I will tomorrow make a call to their competition and find out if they have this service in place. And I will of course, like every disappointed and frustrated customer does, tell everyone who cares to listen about it……………………..

Playing The Emotional Intelligence Card......

I’m in the midst of preparing training material for corporate training for a group of customer relationship managers on Customer Experience Management. Their organization is focused on creating a memorable customer experience that evokes positive emotions and a pleasurable outcome that will have the customers attached to them. Lesson two for tomorrow is on emotional intelligence.

As I sit here going through the specific points that I intend to speak about, it occurs to me over and over that the essence of providing sustained exemplary customer service lies in the emotional intelligence of the service providers. And by service providers here I mean the actual contact points that directly deal with customers and all the support systems behind them that facilitate smooth transactions.

Why is it important to be emotionally intelligent in the customer handling process? What relationship exists between the ‘self’, ‘emotional health’ and ‘customers’? Well, the one thing that’s repeated to an almost clichéd degree is to not take things personally.  Whilst this may seem like common sense, it actually isn’t. Why?

Picture a common scenario where an irate customer is (in typical Kenyan speak) ‘causing’.  Something has gone wrong and the promised service has not been rendered or rendered below expectation. This customer is spewing all manner of expletives directed at you and you are the target of their wrath. It is quite an emotionally uphill task to remember that although this vitriol is directed towards you, and almost always directly being attributed to the customer’s perception of you being the cause of all their problems, that in reality it isn’t about you. It never is.  This customer doesn’t know you from Adam and is not your relative. And therefore all that emerges from their being is an attack on the system, process, procedure or structure that has resulted in their disservice and not about you even if in reality it seems otherwise.

It is natural to have our hackles rise when we’re accused, and have our defenses naturally go up. As the irate customer speaks to us either directly or on phone, a progressively louder and louder voice rapidly speaks to us in our head saying ‘How dare he speak to me like that?’  ‘It’s not my fault and he’s blaming me?’ ‘I’m here breaking my back and he’s coming to shout at me like that?’ ‘Does he have to shout like that even if he has a problem?’ with several variations of the same consistently getting louder each sentence tripping over each other to be heard.

Now what separates the emotionally intelligent from the rest is the conscious effort to have these voices remain just that and not escape out of our mouths in response to the attack. An already irate customer is not going to have a miraculous change in dispensation when questioned about their irrateness. If anything that serves to irk them even more. And should any of these sentiments erroneously slip out, I guarantee that the customer’s level of annoyance will go up on the annoyance scale by several degrees, further ‘explosifying’ the situation.

What is promoted by emotional intelligence proponents is to take a deep breath, invoke an internal counter conversation in a voice that speaks with authority to damp down the dissenting internal voice that declares instead ‘This is not personal’ ‘This customer isn’t attacking me’ ‘They are only unhappy about something they feel has gone wrong whether perceived or real’ ‘What can I do to calm the situation and turn it around?’ and other take charge variations of the same.

This should serve to diffuse the explosive situation and if not, at the very least to diffuse any enraged emotions internally that may threaten to bubble to the surface. Not easy indeed, but practice makes perfect. In the beginning it may seem even a little silly to run these conversations around and asking the customer to ‘please give you a minute’ and walking away to re-compose may prove worthwhile. But as is touted 21 one days is all it takes to form a habit. By the 21^st occurrence, you will have mastery over dealing in an emotionally intelligent manner with difficult customers and emerge emotionally unscathed from the battle zone.

 

Now doesn’t that sound like an inviting proposition? Come on ….let’s jump into the emotional intelligence boat and sail off to freedom. I invite you…………………..

Are Customer Service Charters Workable Heart-Felt Promises or Just Another Fad?

                             This article first appeared in Commerce & Industry Magazine Vol 2 010 of Feb 2014

From the inception of performance contracting in the Public Sector in Kenya, the notion of Customer Service Charters has been discussed as a way to keep the service sector in check. By having the public aware of the commitment the institution is making, and the service levels to expect from the service provider, there has been a shift in customer expectations.

From the original discussions held in April 2005, the Public Service Reform and Development Secretariat, charged with the responsibility of developing structures for performance contracting, defined the desired customer service charter in article 51 of their blueprint  for sector reforms as  “A Service Charter is a Public Statement or ‘Contract’ that defines and declares what an organization is, the organization’s mandate, the services the organization provides, details of any user charges, what standards of services should be expected by the consumers and how the consumers of the service may seek redress if they are dissatisfied with the service(s) provided”. They went further to summarize Service Charters as “providing commitments to provide a certain type, volume and quality of service as well as stating client obligations, providing greater client choice in service delivery and detailing complaints and redress mechanisms”.

This more than adequately captures the essence and importance of Customer Service Charters and underscores the rationale for every institution both in the private and public sector to have one. The private sector in principle seems to have caught on and have these charters under several different titles including ‘Service Delivery Statements’ ‘Customer Service Promises’ or ‘Customer Service Expectations’. Whatever fancy name is applied, the definition of the Customer Service Charter as outlined in the Public Sector arena, by far and large articulately enumerates in detail the specific grounding tenets that should be applied.

Pressing the fast forward  button to current times, we find that with the present government of the day, the Ministry of Devolution and Planning that has a specific unit handling performance contracting, demands performance against targets set out in the individual Ministries, Departments and Agencies’ (MDAs) Customer Service Charters. This extends to Parastatals and all public service commissions and boards, and forms a significant subject of discussion during the end of period appraisals. So serious is this matter that the charters are on display, well framed and in public sight on the walls of all public institutions.

The situation so far sounds very nice, well put together and all set right? What with service contracts in place, appropriate well thought out information captured on charters, service delivery promises and customer commitments dotting the public sector, what more could a country need?  Well, the critical question to ask at this point is if indeed this is a workable system of operation or just a fad that seems to have taken the country by storm.

 In as much as the proverbial writing may be on the wall, and indeed sitting pretty, the crunch point remains if this writing translates into actualization.  The fact that public sector organizations have thought through their individual brand promises and the service delivery standards they would like to commit to their customers, counts for much. The fact that they have gone a step ahead and documented these, proudly hung them up on their walls and posted them on their websites is indeed a huge milestone. The next step would then be to have systems and structures in place to deliver on these promises and to encourage customers to agitate for service delivery.

What would catapult a Customer Service Charter from being a decorative ‘Wall Hanging’ to being a useful communication tool for excellent customer service delivery? The secret lies in three simple points.

The first and most important strategy is to communicate your customer service charter consistently. In addition to prominently displaying it, the leadership of the institution must ensure staff at all levels are aware of the promises made in the charter. The internal customers should be the first advocates and proponents of the charter. The charter should not be seen as something the ‘leadership’ have put up or something routine that is hung on the wall in the same format as the obligatory presidential portraits or organization signage, but as a heartfelt promise. This communication should be consistent and repetitive and should form the opening and closing agenda during meetings, at staff induction and appraisals and at every opportunity that presents itself for reinforcement. The more internal staff hear about and understand the rationale and benefit, the more likely they are to own the promise and strive to deliver on it.

The second secret to Customer Service Charter success is to be in constant touch with the stakeholders for whom the charter was developed – the customers. By seeking customer feedback continuously, and conducting a comparative analysis of the promises made versus the feedback received, the institution will have a good platform to make the necessary adjustments to work towards achievement of the charter declarations. Customer feedback should be sought through both formal and informal means to assess service delivery performance. The people to whom the promises are made are the best test to weigh if the promises are being delivered as per expectation. Listening to your customers and implementing relevant changes is a strategy that has proven over time to yield consistently exceptional results.

The third strategy towards successful Customer Service Charter implementation is to continuously measure progress. As wisdom dictates - ‘things that cannot be measured do not exist’. In tandem with this, each institution should query their charter if it already exists or build in if developing a new charter, instituted measurement parameters per promise to assess performance. These parameters should be simple, clear and concise, enabling performance analysis to yield straight forward results. The assessment should be conducted regularly and persons in charge of conducting this exercise should derive results that are easily communicated across to all staff, to understand the impact of their activities. The results should also be clear enough to enable and influence strategic decision making.

It would add value to conduct a country wide audit of the Customer Service Charters in place and the internal and external customer assessment on performance. This would then inform the specific institution as well as provide a good base for similar institutions seeking to develop charters, to learn from the experiences of those who have gone before. And if the results of these audits would be published, it would enable the wider public from both the formal and informal sector to borrow the positive aspects and be cognizant of the areas for improvement to inform their specific situations.

Sylvester Odhiambo Obong'o in his treatise ‘ Implementation of performance contracting in Kenya’  very rightly postulates that  Kenya introduced performance contracting not only improve service delivery but also to refocus the mind set of public service away from a culture of inward looking towards a culture of business as focused on customer and results.  Indeed customer service charters are a useful tool towards delivery of exceptional customer service. It is however incumbent on the charter developers to go beyond development and invest in implementation for success.

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Emotional Temperature – What degree of emotion do your customers feel for you?

I was at the barber shop yesterday morning getting my hair done, a place I visit every other month or so. As is the trend nowadays, besides hair care, every salon/barber shop has on the menu an array of beauty services on offer including nail care, eye care, massages and the works. As my hair was getting done, the beautician enquired if I would have my nails done too. I think she’d looked at the sorry state my hands and feet were in and proffered a solution. This would ordinarily be a simple question that would generate a yes or no answer right?

Well, in my case, this was something to think deeply and reflect about. You see, the lovely lady who does my nails, feet and eyebrows (what’s the correct name for this profession? Is it beautician?)Valerie is stationed at a beauty parlour on Argwings Kodhek Road about some 15 odd kilometers away from the barbershop that is a stone throw away from my house on Mombasa Road. The facility where she works is also so busy, one must book an appointment to get service. The offer therefore to have my nails done concurrently with my hair would provide a time saving solution that would also eliminate the hassle of booking and travel. I’m sure many ladies (oh and nowadays even gentlemen) can relate to the convenience of doing all the hair and beauty stuff in one spot.

So as I considered this offer, and weighed the pros and cons of where to do my nails, all rational thought pointed at doing my nails at the barber shop. However, irrational thought, bore down heavily, with thoughts such as how I would be betraying Val creeping up and whispering furtively in my left ear. As ridiculous as it sounds, somehow the thought of having someone else do my nails was producing a strong  feeling tantamount to committing grand larceny by taking what was rightfully hers and giving it away to another. Too dramatic right? Indeed it is, but that’s exactly how I felt.

So in the midst of this tempest, I reached for my phone and called Val, hoping somehow that on the off chance she may have a free slot sometime soon, so that I could assess how many more days I’d need to walk around with my ragged look.  So Val, who as usual was delighted to hear from me, let me know that she’d had a cancellation and could take me in if I could get there within the hour as her next appointment was in the afternoon. The relief was overwhelming. I very happily declined the nail care offer and I’m sure the beautician must have wondered what my delight was about, hurried the barber up to finish his business, got into my car and drove like a Matatu driver to Val’s place, using all manner of short cuts and back routes to avoid what has now become a common place occurrence of Saturday mid morning traffic.

Even Val was pretty surprised at how quickly I’d gotten there. As she ministered to my hands and feet, and we caught up on what was going on in each other’s lives and other stories of mutual interest, I felt right at home. I wondered how I had even considered attempting anything else. This is the effect of making your customers your friends. They become fiercely loyal, emotionally attached and are ready to walk your journey with you as a supplier or service provider through thick and thin. How else can one explain leaving one facility with the exact same service offering, and making a mad dash across the city, braving traffic and driving in a manner that puts one at risk of being highlighted on a popular news segment ‘Road Hog’ that casts a spotlight on erratic and bad driving behaviour, to receive the same services elsewhere?

It’s the lesson that we all need to learn and continuously practise, to have our customers at the centre of our focus , have a genuine interest in them and make them feel individually special. So go out there and make your customers your friends, sisters, brothers and family, and like Oleta Adams so powerfully says  - how they get there, be it railway, trailway, airplane, caravan, sailboat or rope to rope, they will surely get to you whichever way they can.