Customer Service & Quality Control in Kenya
What is Customer Service & Quality Control? What do you as a customer think they are?
The best description for customer service would be – it is a service offered to customers before, during & after a purchase, and quality control – maintenance of quality of goods & services.
I do not really think Kenyans take these two seriously. Primarily on the third stage of customer service. Once you have purchased an item or are subscribed to a service, you will never get good customer service. I have had this issue with various large “blue chip” companies. If it is not rude customer service, it will be an inefficient customer service that just never gets back to you. And yes all of you know what I am talking about because you have all at some point gone through the same phase of frustration, most probably in the service industry.
I have yet to understand why they fail on customer service, do they not want us to go back to them with our business? Sometime back I walked into a shop to look for something and no one at the shop gave me any attention for almost 15 minutes, this really set me off and I went to the managers office to complain. The manager did nothing about it and asked me to look around for what I was looking for. Now, how would they expect me to ever walk into their business again?
Customer Service really should just be practiced along:-
- Answer your phone – When someone calls they want to to talk to a real person no some fake recording. Get a decent call forwarding. Or an answering service. Hire staff if you need to and make sure your calls are answered with a smile.
- Listen to your customers – What is worse than when the person you are complaining to is not really listening to you? Listen to your customer and respond positively.
- Train your staff to ALWAYS be courteous, helpful & Knowledgeable - Courtesy goes a long way. Get your staff trained on how to handle queries professionally and have them be knowledgeable. Customers do not really like it when they are told ” I do not know, let me get back to you”.
- Do NOT make promises unless you will keep them – reliability is one of the key elements of customer service, if you say you will have the TV fixed by Friday, have it fixed by Friday. Nothing disappoints a customer more than find out a promise was not fulfilled.
- Deal with complaints – No one likes complaints, but you are bound to get them at some point. Deal with them, and if you are able to give it an extra bit of attention, you will have a happy customer who will bring their business back to you.
These are just a few of the elements of Customer Service that could have your customers smiling and recommending you to their friends & family.
Many a times you find that a new business has started off really well; great customer service, great products & services or just great restaurant with good food, atmosphere and service. But as time goes things start to fall apart, and quality becomes a thing of the past. Once again all of you out there have definitely at some point or the other experienced this too.
Quality control heavily relies on customer service, this is because if you are listening to your customers and acting upon it, then your products and services are going to meet their expectations. Maintain the quality of your goods and services and continously keep setting the bar for your standards higher and you are always going to have happy customers.
Your views & comments are welcome as always.
This post has 8 comments
November 6th, 2009
Agreeing with you, quality control and customer service are crucial to the image a company wants to deliver about itself and also directly influences its growth and financial base. I guess this is why numerous companies do not meet these goals satisfactorily and consistently perform under par. Its high time Kenyan companies woke up to superior service levels and compete at a global level
November 6th, 2009
I don’t seem to understand why a business would overlook on customer service.
But there’s another side of the coin. Kenyans (most) are not used to good customer care such that when you give it to them they begin to wonder what you really want from them. I heard a lady complain that whenever she was ‘too nice’ and smiled to customers, the customers mistook it for flirting. But if she stuck to just the basic service everything went smooth.
November 6th, 2009
I don’t seem to understand why a business would overlook on customer service.
But there’s another side of the coin. Kenyans (most) are not used to good customer care such that when you give it to them they begin to wonder what you really want from them. I heard a lady complain that whenever she was ‘too nice’ and smiled to customers, the customers mistook it for flirting. But if she stuck to just the basic service everything went smoothly.
November 6th, 2009
Great post (as usual).
I couldn’t agree more. I think generally not enough thought and effort goes into designing good customer interaction systems. Just the same way a manufacturing process has to be designed to produce goods as quickly, efficiently and uniformly as possible, so a customer interaction system has to be designed to consistently deliver excellent service at every level. It has to be tailored to the individual service/product being offered. Training has to be done to ensure that staff are not only knowledgeable about the products/services on offer but also maintain some sort of minimum service standard when dealing with customers/clients. The system has to be monitored to ensure that these standards are maintained etc etc
Could go on for days..but great post..& great blog!
November 6th, 2009
My first job was Service Desk Analyst n from wat i saw going on , i can pin most of the blame on management. They hire under qualified people who are then over worked and under trained where even the basic customer service training is not given. So it al comes down to t individual person sorting out peoples complaints who does not see the bigger picture and figures that its not their company so why should they do t job well (which btw to them means goin the extra mile)
November 6th, 2009
Sorry for double comment/virtual blog post,
Just wanted to add, the lack of good service does (in my opinion) present fantastic opportunities for any company that enters the market and can offer ‘the total package’ (in whatever industry).
‘Total package’ being great product, great service, good price.
November 6th, 2009
To all, firstly I really appreciate you support. You guys will keep me going. Asante sana.
@@SiennaKigera I really agree with you on that, being one of my first jobs too as a customer rep, we were over worked and under paid. I feel the rep removes their frustrations by not answering phones or being agitated with the clients.
@Nathaniel Kevin – yes, Kenya is one of the largest economies in Africa and it needs to compete in all domains at a world class level
@wyndago – its hard to believe that all kenyans would perceive good customer service to be something else, those numbers are probably 5%-10% so why loose the other 89%-95% of your customers?
@KW Thank you for the compliment, yes they should handle customer service exactly how they handle R&D and product design or any other phase towards getting the end product to the client.
November 6th, 2009
Hey guys,
Some great points raised, sad the state we find ourselves in.
@OnlineMasai You had a look at Gotissuez? We’re taking the challenge of Service Delivery, Phoney Products and Brands that just don’t get it.
Be sure to join the community and get accountability and responses from Corporates and brands.
Power to the People.
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