Customer Service: An Imperative For Continued Organisational Existence
As soon as I walked into the venue the inscription on the wall read, “Customer service is not a department but an attitude”. For a while I was disturbed and immediately thought all those who had successfully built careers in this field through the years were confused and had wasted not just their time, but their lives. Not at all because much later on I examined the expression more critically and understood it in perspective.
The following statements and the essay thereafter will create a better understanding of the expression above. “Please drop your umbrella there before moving over to the information desk”. “I’m not the person who was on duty then so I really don’t have details of what my colleague discussed with you”.
“I’m sorry but that bouquet service is specially reserved for only people who subscribe for monthly plans of {amount} and above just like one of my staff told you and besides you should have gone through the terms and conditions before signing up”. “We’ll need the file he was using in his former hospital before we commence treatment.
Can we know who will be responsible for his medical bills”. These statements are made by junior, middle and senior level staff in organizations. Neither of them is exclusively a reserve of individuals within a particular stratum of the organization and are just a few of the utterances made by service providers in various sectors.
To say that customer service is not just a department in any organization is not a misnomer. There is more to customer service than the act or series of acts practiced in organizations by individuals who are put in a particular unit; it is an attitude. Some of the vital factors necessary for the continued operation of any business venture are the physical/technological manpower, funds and a market which are the customers and clients. One of these factors is a usually direct product of the next and revolves in a cycle that way. Initial funds are used to put in place physical and technological manpower who work to establish and maintain a stream of external stakeholders including investors, clients and customers. These set of people come in with their funds which are in turn recycled by the firm to pay bills and ensure continuity.
The essence of this is to highlight the place of customer relationship and how powerful it can be in the life of any organization. Stanford University once published the findings of a research showing that about 85% of organizations focused on employing individuals who could establish and manage relationships because of how important it has become. That the customer is king is stale gist, what is key is being able to transform skepticism to optimism, optimism to patronage, patronage to repeat patronage and repeat patronage to loyalty. While we understand that parting with money by an individual or organization in purchase of a particular commodity or service is usually a thoroughly considered action based on logic and influenced by such economic principles as scale of preference, opportunity cost and theory of comparative advantage, on a large scale and when close substitute products compete keenly the over-riding advantage will be the level of attention placed on the customer/client, not on the product. No wonder Ron Willingham opined in the Inner Game of Selling that “selling is 15% logical and 85% emotional”.
From time immemorial no individual or organization has sold a product or provided a service. What has persisted as long as the business environment is concerned is providing value from the side of the organization and purchase of benefits embedded by customers or clients. In other words while organizations make strategic efforts at stemming the tide of competition in the market place which has now become fierce owing to the availability of close substitute products by endowing their products with benefits to outshine those of their rivals, the customers have taken the responsibility of ensuring that the product packaged with the best benefit is what they go for. For this reason all aspects of the marketing mix has been deployed to bring to the fore these benefits as a way of attaining customer attention and patronage. While this is so these aspects of the mix must have to be garnished in a manner as to show that concern and attention before the customer purchases the product, while he or she uses the product and after consuming the product.
In very recent times organizations, especially large ones who deal in consumer goods and services have had to dedicate more time, energy and resources building their marketing team as this is considered a key factor in helping them attract their envisaged volume of business. On the other hand some other organizations have looked at maintaining best practices in terms of financial resource management and yet some are largely technically focused, planning on building a formidable technical group/arm to handle machines and manage clients’ businesses. While all of these are good and quite commendable can we ask how the marketing team will thrive without understanding the idiosyncrasies in dealing with both corporate and individual customers. How can they succeed if a client probably thinks that all they are after is his or her money? How can they thrive if the client fears that after the transaction he or she will be at the mercy of the firm? How can they thrive if a relationship beyond sales is not established and maintained? No matter how prudent the finance team is what will it have to manage if customers and clients lose faith in the organization? Absolutely nothing! Of course the client would have gone with his or her funds leaving the organization financially stranded and bankrupt. Of what use will the technical knowhow of the tech team both in handling machines and executing tasks be without continued patronage of its goods and services which will in turn drive the quest for more improvements in goods and service delivery? The answers to the questions are obvious.
Quality customer relationship is therefore clearly a base factor in organizational success. While this may be overlooked by large organizations that already have the client base, it is to be considered and taken seriously by small and medium organizations. Its relevance is spread across all industries which include service providers, manufacturing and product sales. Even when clients are in form of organizations making them corporate entities, of course such entities are managed by individuals and no individual enjoys being kept in oblivion of his or her financial interest in an issue no matter how infinitesimal. The individual or organization that succeeds in business is one which plays empathetic roles to the customer, proffering guidelines to ensure problems do not arise and promptly solving them when they do arise. It’s called Pro-Active Relationship Management. It has become worse in a world where technology has really helped in fine-tuning the quality of so many things and being able to place them right before the customers’ eyes via what we call advertising which is just a part in the marketing mix.
The customer’s concern before making a purchase, whether of a product or service, is usually sincere and not to be misconstrued. What is to be done is strategic relationship management which can and should be deployed at all levels of client-customer engagement. Customer service is not emotional blackmail. It is not just kindness. It has nothing to do with running a business at a loss or introducing unprofessional practices. Its importance is witnessed by the fact that this all-important phrase is even now referred to as relationship management and customer engagement. It is important to say that the onus of this task shouldn’t be bore by junior or middle level staff but by all and sundry in the organanisational chain. Organizational size, nature of business, commodity(ies) traded in business, business clout, volume of sales, relationship with relevant authorities no matter how robust are not to be considered as making customer service dispensable. Failure to engage in this can result in dire consequences on the part of the organization some of which include loss of customers/clients, decline in patronage, sales index and financial fortune, diminished corporate identity, unfavorable business relationship with government, regulatory and law enforcement agencies, bankruptcy and ultimately liquidation.
Kingsley Ohajunwa is a Nigerian writer. He can be reached via email on [email protected]