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……………………..