Nil By Mouth - Same Brand Disparate and Desperate Service

We had such distinctly different experiences at Java Coffee House this past weekend that left us rather perplexed. The Java Coffee House brand has become quite a formidable brand in Kenya in the past few years. It leads the way in brand standardization and providing customers with a similar experience irrespective of the outlet one visits, in terms of menu items, ambience, service delivery, billing and presentation. Even with the current outlets popping up on the sidewalks and at Petrol stations, the Java experience is just the Java experience and that’s what keeps customers coming.

So much so is this that menu customizations are not part of the service protocol. I was advised recently that to get a customized vegetarian version of their famous Quesadilla or to tweak the inputs or presentation would call for the proposal to be sent to quality control for entry in to the menu to then be put out to all units for offer to ensure uniformity. So with this level of standardization and quality control, what has happened to the service offered by the people that form the brand? Is a brand the environment and physical tangible attributes or is the brand the people that work there?

On Friday afternoon we were at Java Hurlingham at the Shell Petrol station for a work meeting and a fabulous, attentive and very pleasant waitstaff called Wilkins took service to a different level when he offered to squat and fix our power cables into the sockets under the seats that we had trouble reaching. All this with a smile. We were blown away by his patience and acts of service. On Saturday night we went out to dinner at Java Junction and the waistaff Jane was what I can only call a ‘case study’ of how not to treat your customers including application of Nil By Mouth treatment to us after raising concern about the length of time our orders were taking. She took to plonking our meals on the table and pointing with her fingers to indicate where the items we requested for were.

What creates this disparity?

It is my observation that very often when brands expand, staff that have been in the system for some time, get posted to the new outlets to extend the brand culture there and new staff get absorbed in the original units. What then needs to be done to ensure the new staff get accultured to the brand’s way of doing things? We unanimously concluded that Jane must have been new at the job for her way was clearly not the ‘Java Way’. Team leaders and those who hold the brand strategy in custody need to be very sensitive about how the people that work for the brand represent the brand. The brand’s interface is largely through staff interactions and communication with customers is right up there on the Richter scale.

I challenge all brands out here, no matter the size or nature, to have a standardized code of conduct and response to different customer situations. A simulation drill needs to be prepared and practised ahead of time where every imaginable customer conflict situation is role played in advance and the respondents prepare in readiness to execute with patience and reassurance.  

Customer’s love order and predictability. They thrive in these environments. It takes only one out-of-order situation to have customers doubt a brand and the cost of re-acquisition of lost customers can bring the house down.

Let’s proceed to define our customer service standards then apply them uniformly across all customer touch points. 

Little Leaks Doth Big Ships Sink

                                                          

I was at the Safaricom Care Center at Nakumatt Mega yesterday afternoon to get my SIM card converted into a microSIM. After getting the service rendered, I needed to have the PIN changed to check if it had correctly latched on after insertion. There were four care agents on duty and I dutifully stood in the queue awaiting my turn.

A light skinned lady dressed in regular clothes (white, flowered attire) came up to me in the queue and asked “What service are you waiting for?” I looked at her and wondered who she was. But because she didn’t look threatening in any way, and she spoke with some level of authority, I told her about my need for the SIM PIN change, and she then directed me to the cashier’s counter to get the service done.

Apparently the cashier who at the time had no customer to attend to, serves as a multi-service desk primarily receiving and processing payments, but  also providing relief services as needed.  I thought that was a really good system.  As I got served, the regular clothed lady passed near where I was and I asked her “Do you work here?” She looked surprised and said “Yes. Why do you ask?’  I let her know that I was surprised at her conversation with me for several reasons:

1.       I didn’t know who she was. She hadn’t introduced herself to me.

2.       She emerged from the main door and not from an office inside that would have indicated that she was part of the team.

3.       She wasn’t uniformed and so didn’t look like an official.

4.       She had no name tag.

She acknowledged all this as she proceeded into the back office.

The service was great and the people in the shop were very helpful. My interaction with everyone was pleasant and I am a diehard subscriber. I however feel that as service delivery is the key differentiator, and as a brand that has positioned itself for leadership – it is the small things that matter. It is not technological innovations that will change the game, it is the connection with customers on the ground.

And yes, she was indeed very helpful and I much appreciated her intervention. I would have been more impressed if she greeted me, introduced herself and then proceeded with the rest of the conversation. That would have taken say 15 more seconds of her time and would have made all the difference in the world wouldn’t it?

As we digest this, let’s ponder over how John Wooden so aptly says “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”

What's Your Body Saying?

We sat down to a  business meeting at a  coffee house housed in Thika Road Mall this past Saturday to walk through a project briefing with a client. A waiter came and handed us menus and left. We got down to discussions and it was about an hour later when a different waitress came to our table and enquired whether we had been served.  After indicating that we had been there for an hour with no service she said ‘Sorry’ and proceeded to ask after our orders.

Being the customer service enthusiast that I am, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to let her know that although she had said ‘Sorry’ she in actual fact did not look sorry at all. Nothing in her body language, manner or tone of voice indicated that she was truly sorry. She had a business-as-usual demeanor. She seemed very surprised at my remark and went on to explain that she also did not understand why her colleague had not come back to ‘look after’ the tables he had been assigned, and went on to explain their system of assigning tables. Pretty much what she was doing was abdicating responsibility and ‘blaming’ her colleague. This really got my goat up, and we can spend an entire day talking about collective responsibility for service and the woes of an ‘It-wasn’t-me-that’s-not-my-job’ attitude, but let’s save that for another day. Today, we’re focusing on body language for customer service excellence.

So our dear waitress – let’s call her Njoki, wasn’t at all remorseful. Nothing about her way of being communicated remorse at the situation. And let’s face it, one hour without service in an upmarket coffee house, no…….. let me rephrase that – in any service facility no matter the rank, is downright bad service. So after Njoki’s response, I proceeded to demonstrate to her what I thought may have been an appropriate response as follows:-

• A shocked expression from her about our long wait for service
• An indication of how that is really serious and a service no-no
• A confirmation that, that indeed is not the norm and shouldn't happen
• A sincere apology for the mishap and a promise of immediate rectification
• An acknowledgement of our patience for having endured the long wait
• A promise to get our orders out in the shortest time possible

All of which should have been delivered with sincere conviction, including the appropriate body language and tone of voice.

I told Njoki that should she have done the above, I would have felt much much better and not felt like some inconsequential customer who wasn’t worth the establishment’s time of day. Njoki then proceeded to rub my shoulder and told me “Ok I’m sorry - please feel better”. I am not sure that I did.

The thing about body language is that it is difficult to fake. Our bodies speak of their own volition. Excitement, joy, sincerity, regret, nervousness, derision, impatience and many other feelings all manifest in different ways through gestures and stance. Many times, we do not even realize that our bodies have spoken unless the person being ‘spoken’ to points it out. We should therefore take two approaches to ensure body language for customer service excellence.

One is to be as sincere, open and genuine as possible in our interactions with customers. Our bodies will automatically convey the same. If we truly appreciate our customers and delight in their presence and feedback whether positive or negative, our bodies will speak our sincerity. The Second is to be conscious of different body language messages and make a deliberate effort to practice and adopt engaging and approachable body language as we interact with our customers.

For after all as the experts indicate, when we speak, 55% impact of the communication is visual (your body language) 38% is your voice (tone, inflection, pitch and rate) and 7% is verbal (your words).  Important statistics to chew on as we strive to raise the service excellence bar.

Of Black and White Hospitality

Restaurant hopping is one of my favourite pass times, usually under the guise of looking for a nice quiet environment in which to write, meet up business partners and sit my with my colleague to plan and map the coming period’s activities. Nice excuses to try out new places right?  Well, the experience of sitting in a wide variety of eating places brings about an interesting phenomenon that although is fiercely denied in the hospitality industry, still exists – racism.

Interestingly is isn't racism practiced in the hard cold black and white, or coloured way, where discrimination occurs one entity against the other, but covert racism where the employees of an establishment completely fawn over customers over  a specific race, in this specific case Caucasian, providing a starkly different level of service above other customers.

Without much variation – this is how the scene plays out……..

• Enter Mzungu (Caucasian) customer(s).
• Staff run to the entrance/lobby/reception area to welcome customer(s).
• Wide wide smiling and over exuberant words of welcome from staff.
• Customer(s) is shown to the most vantage sitting space.
• Manager of facility comes out to add to the welcome chorus for the customer(s).
• Staff proceed to fawn over customer(s) attending to their every whim, expressed or otherwise.
• Manager hovers about never far from the customer(s) table.
• Customer(s) finish and are thanked profusely for coming.
•  Staff provide a chorus of goodbyes expressing enthusiastic appreciation for the visit.
• Staff escort customer(s) out performing acts akin to deep bows and curtsies.
• Staff return to ‘normal’ ignoring other customers and only attending to them when summoned.

Change the restaurant name, location, food specialty, star grading, cost or orientation – same script, different cast. Always.

So let’s speculate why this happens like clockwork without fail……..

Why is it that staff from all ranks in these eateries are reduced to fawning, adulatory and obsequious beings on the entry of Wazungus. Is it because…….

• We are still tangled in the web of colonial hangover where we believe we should submit?
• These types of customer(s) leave tips as a matter of practice?
• We believe they patronize restaurants often as against other races who do so on ‘occasion’?
• It is the in the establishment’s rule book to do so and observation otherwise is fatal?

Do you suppose these are valid postulations? Could there be any other reasons why this phenomenon happens? What are your thoughts? Please add to the list and spur a healthy discussion?

Whatever the case may be, it is possible that some of the perpetrators of these acts may not even be aware that their bodies speak and that they display such mannerisms. In service delivery – body language and non-verbal communication is a strong factor for success. 

This therefore goes out as an appeal for raised awareness and consciousness and to have the people in leadership have their teams adopt a brothers' keeper system, be aware of, point out and kill that behaviour.

The Power of Customer Feedback - A Case of Coptic Hospital.

In this country we have been so rightly accused of being very tolerant to mediocrity. And whilst we would like to stand up with placards and declare this untrue, a common hashtag that follows any mal-happening both verbal and written is #accept-and-move-on.

It is claimed that we are socialized this way - to not speak up and demand what is due to us, and to humbly accept that we cannot change the status quo. If this is so, and we claim to want to be the first world of Africa, how will we influence service delivery from service providers, if we the consumers do not rise up and demand our service rights?

Well – I was pleasantly surprised last week when the leadership at Coptic Hospital sent me evidence of their having mapped out the patient journey complete with visual guide to communicate with customers and guide their steps. This visual is placed in customer contact areas to have their patients know and understand what to expect.  I was blown away!

That they responded in the first place to my comment on social media was great. That they took the feedback positively and committed to do something about it and get back to me was even greater. That they delivered on their promise was startling. Startling in a very delightful way. So used are we to empty promises that when one honours their word – it absolutely thrills us.

And so yes – I am thrilled. That this Hospital has customer centricity right where it belongs – being steered from the top and that customer feedback governs their decision making. Hats off to the Coptic Team. I am duly impressed. You have converted me from a complaining customer into an ambassador.

I have many engagements that have me speak about Customer Service do’s and don’ts as well as engagements that have me input into many an organization’s customer service strategy. The response to customer feedback by Coptic has wormed and warmed its way high up the ladder of examples that I will elucidate.

Well Done Dr. Francis and Team! I acknowledge you all.

The Two Magic Words

Quite high on my New Year’s resolutions, I reached out to a colleague in industry who runs a fantastic programme for business owners that focuses on business excellence and leadership differentiation, with a view to having participants transform their enterprises from SMEs to global corporations. Needless to say I had been procrastinating quite some on this matter and had finally made up my mind to join the first intake this year. 

Sure enough after a day or two, one of his business development managers got in touch and we had a very good discussion. He promised to dispatch off the information on the course timetable and payment schedules to my email right away for I needed to block out the classroom and coaching sessions in advance.

Let’s just say that one week down the line, this polished, well spoken, assertive business development manager – let’s call him Enrique hadn’t lived up to his promise. For a serial procrastinator who has finally decided to latch onto Nike’s “Just Do IT!” and requires all the support to “Just Get It Done!” by registering and diarizing for the programme, this kind of Malaysian activity wasn’t helping the situation. So I got in touch with my colleague( his boss) and shared my woes.

Needless to say that in the next fifteen minutes, the required information was in my inbox, notwithstanding that it was a Sunday evening. The good Enrique had sent detailed information on programme launch, programme costs, programme dates and programme breakdown. Excellent information that exceeded my expectations. And that it was sent just minutes after I had registered my complaint was quite the boon. 

However……………….I felt quite quite dissatisfied.

I wondered if I needed to ‘pick’ up the matter or let it drop, but the nag of a teacher who lives in me couldn’t let it pass and so this is how the conversation went –

After me thanking Enrique for sending the information and promising to look through it in detail I concluded the email by saying:

On a final note – the customer service strategist in me thinks your opening line could have been as follows.

 “Hello Carolyne – kindly receive my sincere apologies for the delay in getting this information to you after indicating I would send it after we spoke…………”

Do you suppose this would have made me, your prospective customer feel appreciated and not like its ‘kawaida’ for you to say you’ll send something right away and then you break the promise?

He then responded and said -

Dear Carolyne,

Apologies for this.

Thank you for the feedback. It shall help in future improvement.

Kind regards,

Enrique

And right there our reconnection was established. He’d uttered the magic words. Albeit being said after the nudging, I still felt validated. We’ve had very pleasant conversations since then and I’m scheduled for take-off in February.

Let’s just reconfirm here and now that the magic words that we were taught in our child hood – please, thank you, may I, I’m sorry are still valid. They work like magic and work magic. No matter the circumstance, no matter the situation, no matter the incident, if there’s need to utter them, please do. You will never go wrong.

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.