A friend of mine had a right rant on Facebook about the customer service, or lack of it, he has recently received from one of Bahrain’s major telecom providers and this got me thinking.
Customer service both given and expected is perceived differently by different countries, cultures or societies.
Within each of these, there are also differing levels depending on your socio-economic position.
In Western countries, you have a range from the US to the UK and Continental Europe.
In the US, customer service is everything mainly because the waiting staff depend so very much on tips to enhance their wages.
In restaurants, hotels and even shops the staff are all over you like a rash asking if everything is OK, can they do any more and wishing you a nice day.
This is because they expect 20 per cent of the bill as a tip.
Americans are used to this and so automatically calculate an additional 20pc when they pay for things.
Europeans and British people find this level of service overpowering and intrusive and are more used to paying the ticket price with a more usual tip of a couple of pounds or euros no matter what the bill total.
So in the States staff are usually disappointed with Brits, and in Britain staff are usually overjoyed by Americans.
In other cultures tipping is almost taboo.
In many eastern countries leaving a tip is almost an insult as the proprietors expect that they have factored in a good customer experience to the total bill price and there is no need for extra.
Customer service in other organisations such as utility and telecom companies, is not however based on gratuities.
The customer will show their level of satisfaction with the service received by continuing to be a customer or not.
The attitude to customer service by the management of these organisations says a lot about their market position.
If you are dealing with a monopoly such as the electricity provider then you do not have the luxury of taking your business elsewhere, so they do not have to invest in customer service training.
If you have competition such as the telecom companies then the company that does will win most business.
Customer service training does not even need to be expensive.
It can be as little as training your staff to just listen to a compliant and at least make some efforts to remedy it.
The answer “you cannot return this here you have to go to another shop” could easily be replaced with “leave it with me and I will have it sent to the other shop by our internal messenger”.
First scenario unhappy customer, second scenario happy customer.
It doesn’t take much, but then when you have senior management who came from financial or technical backgrounds and were never customer facing then customer service is not high on their lists.
Maybe if you are one of these senior management types you should try thinking like your customers instead of your shareholders.
Many years ago Ford Motor Company did a survey of their employees and asked who is the most important person in the company?
The accountants said accountants, the designers said designers, the sales staff said sales but a lowly assembly line worker was the only person to get it right.
He said the customer is the most important person. This is true for all businesses and because one telecom company in Bahrain forgot this then my friend will never darken their door again.
Jackie@JBeedie.com