PAYING WITHOUT RECEIVING VALUE

Sometime ago in my office, we had to file a law suit against an internet service provider because we were unable to use the internet for the best part of a whole month though we paid in full for that month. It was in the days before Blackberry became a fad in Nigeria. We needed to do research on the internet we were unable to, clients sent urgent mails but we had limited resources outside of our internet service provider to adequately check and respond timeously. We at a point, had to resort to cyber cafes to do some of the heavy online work we needed to do. We had several times before then experienced similar problems which we communicated to our service provider without any real positive result. That particular month was by far the worst so far because our internet did not work for up to a cumulative period of 10 hours during that month. The service provider made no attempt to offer any compensation for all the lost hours and days. We took them to court and resolved never to use them again. This kind of situation plays out with a lot of services we pay for in advance. Once we pay in advance, most service providers care little whether consumers actually get value for the money paid. Especially in circumstances where the competitors also adopt similar attitude because there are not too many of them to pick from and a lot of us consider the cost of starting again with another provider particularly in the case of internet and pay TV. We send text messages, it fails but we are still charged, PHCN doesn't supply power, we are nevertheless still exorbitantly billed (except for those fortunate enough to have the pre-paid meter which they have stopped distributing), the internet will not work, but we still pay...All these continue because we accept them, we shrug and continue, we are silent, we grumble and let everything slide... Imagine a situation where more people take out actions against our service providers or at least complain very loudly but civilly. Have you ever noticed that a lot of companies and businesses do their utmost to avoid customers making a scene? Now, I am not advocating us making scenes, but we could flood the internet, the social media, the newspaper with reports of these lack of value received in spite of money paid and watch if there'll be any change. Sometime ago when there was a problem with Blackberry services, after the resolution of the problem Glo compensated its blackberry subscribers with 3 extra days to replace the lost days. This is the right practice and should be commended. What do you think? Should subscribers, whether to mobile telephone networks, internet or cable TV be made to pay for days lost due to the service provider's fault?

Service wins the Game!

Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.

Tony Allesandra

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Bill Gates Nigerians are celebrating the victory of the Super Eagles after 19 years since the last cup was lifted. Victory yesterday was especially super sweet for the Coach of the Super Eagles, Stephen Keshi who was himself once a player and a captain of the Super Eagles before his retirement as a player, and of course for the players themselves because not many people gave them chance of even moving on to the quarter finals let alone winning the cup. Most people especially just before the match with the Ivoriens had given the game, and probably the cup as well to the star-studded Ivorian side. I remember on twitter after the first game, the very harsh words of disappointment against the team and their handlers. I remember one of my brothers tweeting for Nigerians to be patient with the boys and not to withdraw their support for the boys since in any case, most people still support their European teams even in the face of long years of continuous defeat. However, Stephen Keshi and the boys were determined to change our minds and change the downward slide of Nigeria as a footballing nation by performing much better than in the recent past. The Super Eagles team and their coaches listened to the complaints of Nigerians, they saw and felt our lost confidence and they used the complaints and lost confidence to fuel their passion for the game and the country. The passion to live up to and probably surpass the glories of the past brought the cup back to Nigeria.

In effect, we can say that the Super Eagles and their coaches were like business owners who knew that their most unhappy customers, in this case, the Nigerian people are their greatest source of learning. Our disappointment in their past lack-lustre performances made them look inwards and gave them the ability to draw strengths from their own passion for the game and gave them, and ultimately us, Nigerians the victory that had been elusive for nineteen years! And so, in the end, their desires to render great service to their fatherland by making the country proud again won them the cup. Of course, there is still plenty of room for improvement, but meanwhile, let's savour the very sweet and delicious taste of victory! Keep soaring Super Eagles! And God bless Nigeria!

Quotes of the day

Until the reports start coming in (and beyond of course), I'll try putting up quotes related to customer service or the reasons behind the creation of this blog. Quotes of the day:

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm

- Abraham Lincoln

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so

- Mahatma Gandhi

CUSTOMER (DIS)SERVICE

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there

— Will Rogers

A man without a smiling face must not open a shop

– Chinese Proverb. I believe, because since virtually everybody is a consumer of both products and services, customer service should be a phrase that will hardly require to be defined before its meaning can be understood. I nevertheless will humour those who might want to know one of its formal definitions by borrowing a definition of the term that I saw on Wikipedia. Wikipedia, quoting the definition of TURBAN, Efraim (2002) Electronic Commerce: A Managerial Perspective, and defined it as “a series of activities designed to enhance the value of customer satisfaction - that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer’s expectation.” I will amend the last aspect of the above definition to read “the feeling that a product or service or both the product and the service of selling it has met the customer’s expectation. There is a reason why I tinkered with the definition quoted on Wikipedia; even if it is just a product that you are selling, the very act of negotiation before the actual sale and the mannerisms displayed in the sale also qualify, in my view as customer service. The description of customer service as a system designed to maximise customer satisfaction is thus in my view, quite apt. Every business owner or service provider knows that he/she must have customers to survive and thrive. Every business owner should thus be aware of the importance of making and indeed keeping customers happy and ensure that whenever the customer requires any product or service that he sells or provides, he or his product or service is the first that comes to mind. If this is so, why then do we have, particularly here in Nigeria, such really poor customer service most of the time? I know it is often said that the role of the government in our individual and collective lives are often exaggerated, in this case however, it is my belief that the government has a lot to answer for in the first reason why this happens and the second fault of course lie with our failure as consumers of products and services to realize the enormity of our power and to use that power to make our business owners fall in line by treating us right. The government’s fault is their failure to protect the consumers from exploitation by those they give licences to provide certain services and sell certain products. Government agencies also rather than regulate the way they should happily look the other way once money changes hands. Our fault as consumers as hinted earlier, is our failure to realize that we have the power to make our service providers behave right, it lies in our abdication of our crowns as kings and queens deserving of royal treatments. Of course, this is not to say that we should misuse our power and bad mouth businesses not deserving of such, no. It simply lies in us using the social media which most of us can now access through our phones, to name and as they say, shame. It is in our power to report our experience either with surprisingly (or even customarily good customer service) or with really bad or customarily bad customer service. Most of us complain for instance about the really bad service we have been getting in recent times from our mobile service providers. But really, what has anyone of us done about it? The only thing I know most of us do is to grumble and leave it at that. I don’t know how many people have experienced this, but also in recent times, added to the issue of bad service from our mobile networks is the really horrendous customer care that we now receive. Before my recent experience, the main issue I had with the networks’ customer care was the unreasonably long period they keep me on hold while waiting to speak with a customer care assistant or personnel. I’m guessing the long period of waiting can be attributed to the high number of people who also have complaints to lodge or issues to resolve. When I finally get to speak with the customer care assistant, I usually didn’t have any issue with their manner. They may or may not be able to resolve my issue, but I never had encountered anyone that I could label as rude or saucy. Well, I never did, until sometime towards the end of last year (2012) and when it happened, I was so shocked that it took me several seconds before I could utter a word. And even when I eventually did, the only I managed to say was “well, thanks for being so rude, what great service” or some other words to that effect. I am sure we all encounter varying degrees of bad customer service daily, from the government officials who will see people to attend to but will rather choose to gist with colleagues and or friends with not a care for the fact that those people might also have other pressing engagements to attend to, to the one who will refuse to attend to your file until you are forced to part with some reasonably large amount of money, to the internet service provider who tells regularly that data that should ideally last for a month has been exhausted in three weeks even when you hardly do more than check mails and use Facebook! Like I have observed in responses to the readers’ feedback page of the ever-innovative Punch newspaper, no reasonable business owner likes his/her faults to be publicly exposed. That is the power that I believe can make a difference in the kind of customer service we receive from those whose wealth we contribute to through our patronage of their products and services. This is what has informed my creating this blog. It is for everybody to be able to come to this page and freely report any bad or particularly good customer service that he/she has received. Please feel very free to post comments, so long as what is reported is fact and not fiction or an exaggeration of the true situation. I believe, we can make the difference, but that can only happen if we act, and we name and we shame or we name and commend those who are already doing well to encourage them to do even better. Kindly like the facebook page created just for the purpose www.facebook.com/CustomerServiceReports and please don't forget to visit the page to report your good or bad customer service experience Kindly also spare a moment to take the survey on the blog. Thank you!