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Article from Business Times, 18 January 2011
Business Times (January 18, 2011)
COMMENTARY
Respect the customer – or else
By PAUL HENG
FOR enquiries on your account, please press 1. For waiver of annual fees, please key in your eight-digit mobile number, and we will get back to you within three working days.'
Sounds familiar? No prizes for guessing correctly that this telephone recording belongs to a credit card company. I've long suspected that this is yet another business strategy employed to deter cardholders from being successful in requesting a waiver of their credit card annual fees.
Frankly, three working days is too long in this day and age. If you are happy waiting (which I did once), the chances that the call may not even come in are pretty high. So you call again. Or (so the credit card company hopes) you forget about the request and merrily pay off the annual dues with your next accounting statement.
I have my own strategy for dealing with such tactics. I go past the request to key in my mobile number, and wait for the next prompt to press * to speak to a customer service representative. Ten out of 10, your request will be granted - all you need to do is to simply state that 'I wish to discontinue the use of the card'.
Here in Singapore, who pays for the use of a credit card these days? Bank/credit card issuers are simply too happy to have you own one of their cards. The money they can potentially make from charging interest for partial repayment of card charges is more than sufficient to make up for the annual fees.
We read ever so often in the media about how far Singapore is away from the ideal state of excellent customer service. To me, there are at least two key issues: mindset and training.
You can invest in training to provide your customer-facing employees cutting-edge knowledge, techniques and skills to deliver superior customer service. What you cannot influence, however, is the mindset of wanting to put into practice what is taught in the classroom, to serve and to be helpful to others.
This is where, perhaps, some of our neighbours are blessed - for example, the Thais and the Filipinos. Most of them are just wired to be patient and helpful to others - they may not even see it as 'serving' others. For some of them, I suspect ,it is simply being their natural selves.
There is a distinct difference between how local and foreign care- givers, for example, behave. If I were to put it simply, the foreigners 'engage' with their charges; the locals do what they are paid to do. I hasten to add that I am generalising here - there will, of course, be exceptions in both groups of care-givers.
Even toilet attendants can teach you a thing or two about service attitude. Recently, I dined at a 5-star hotel's restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. I visited the gents after a couple of drinks and came face to face with a middle-aged toilet attendant. He gave me eye contact and a smile, and wished me 'good evening, sir'. I reciprocated and asked if he had had his dinner yet.
He responded in the affirmative and continued his work of mopping the floor dry. This is a rare experience. Most times, you may get a greeting from the attendant (if you're lucky) and have him standing by the washbasin when you are done, so that he can turn on the tap and hand you a towel.
This is when you have to decide whether you want to give him a tip. For this gentleman at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, I had already made up my mind to give him a tip after the exchange; he wasn't even waiting to turn on the tap for me. You should have seen the smile on his face when he accepted my $10.
No excuse
For CEOs, here's my two cents' worth of advice: You may be leading a workforce of 80, 800 or 8,000-plus. Whatever the number, it does not excuse you from setting an example in excellent customer service.
Yes, you are ever so busy with many other 'more important' roles and responsibilities. But if you do not consider taking care of your customers as important, and they decide to give their business to your competitor, you may not even have a business to manage ultimately. This is especially true for SME owners: the importance of customer service has to be ingrained in your mindset - and your staff's - right from the beginning.
You may sneer at what I am saying here and think: 'What utter nonsense! We will always be around to fly passengers from country A to B. Singapore cannot do without us.'
Yes, you could be right. But in this world, there are not too many absolute 'rights' that are timeless. Remember stories of how institutions over 100 years old went kaput or of decades-old companies being acquired by competitors or venture capitalists out to buy and break up the company into parts before selling them for a nice profit?
Nothing is impossible these days, so don't be too sure of yourself. As far as I am concerned, you may be the CEO - but I am still your customer, and you represent the company. I should logically have access to you if I have some constructive feedback for you, which may help your company to be even better. I have not tried it, but I suspect the CEO of our national airline or my mobile phone service provider will probably not take my call.
Powerful message
What I have tried, however, is to write to the CEO of the company that I want to give feedback to. Alas, not one has replied personally to me all these years although they typically assign one of their subordinates to follow up.
This is good enough for me - but it would be great if the CEO could at least pen me an email or letter to thank me for spending time and effort to provide them the feedback so they can do better, and end by encouraging me to continue giving them feedback.
And once you have done this, let the entire company know. It would be a powerful message to everyone: 'The customer is important. Take good care of them - and they will, in turn, take care of our salaries.'
Another pet peeve of mine was having to deal with so-called customer service personnel - 'was', because I no longer bother to go to them (I go straight to the CEO, remember?) 'So-called', because they do not really give me any service; they simply regurgitate what they have been trained to say or do.
So you will get your fair share of 'let me bring this up to management', 'we cannot do this as it is against our policy', or 'I cannot help you - you will have to write in to us'. All these mechanical responses do absolutely nothing to soothe the nerves of the irate customer; as a matter of fact, they only serve to irritate the customer even more.
Reasonable customers generally do not expect you to be perfect, but they do expect you to fix things when they go wrong. My family and I, and most of our friends, have since this year resolved never to fly a certain budget airline. The reason is simple: not only are they not reliable at all, they do not know the meaning of 'service recovery' - or even 'service' for that matter.
Operating a budget airline does not give you the privilege of making a last-minute decision not to take off at the scheduled time. What is a double-fault is that they do not tell you what time the original flight is actually going to take off - if you are fortunate enough to speak to someone at their office, they will most probably tell you to go wait at the airport to find out for yourself.
What a load of rubbish - totally unacceptable! Success is not about flying your nth hundred thousandth or nth millionth passenger - it is about the experience your passengers have flying your airline. Your passengers are not statistics - they are human beings with feelings. Get it?
Customer service is all about respect. If businesses respect their customers, treat them fairly and truly appreciate their business, there is a better chance they will remain loyal to you. And with customers these days being more savvy and understanding, it is all about choices. They can, and will, make a choice not to continue to do business with you, if you give them the slightest opportunity. Never, ever underestimate the power of a dissatisfied customer.
Effective CEOs know and understand the importance of taking good care of their customers - but how many walk the talk is another issue altogether. When you have loyal customers, they will give you a continuous stream of revenue - and your shareholders, your staff members and every one will be happy. Now, isn't that a nice way to end my story?
The writer is an executive coach at NeXT Corporate Coaching Services
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