The other day I was talking to a colleague of mine at work and he happened to mention that he was working late on 31st  December. He also mentioned to me that he had ordered a meal from steers at 7PM and that same meal was delivered to him at 9.15PM. 2.15 hours later!!

I think that the Kenyan fast food industry has a lot to learn, honestly they are not a fast food industry, they are a slow crap food industry. Come on we have all experienced it. You walk into your nearest steers or nandos joint, pay some extreme prices for a meal and wait upto 30 minutes to get it. What part of that is FAST? When you do finally get your meal it is nothing compared to what you expected.

The other thing I have noticed personally is the hygiene and cleanliness of these joints, when they start as a new outlet they are super clean, a few months down the line, the floors are black, you can see fat/oil stuck on the cookers the tables are never wiped and flies are buzzing all over the place.

I really like how fast food joints such as KFC, Pizza Hut & McDonald serve you as a client. As soon as you get to the counter you first receive a friendly smile and as soon as you have placed your order your food is served to you in a tray. 1 minute tops. These outlets are maintained really well too and are always clean.

This all leads to Quality Control, and the reason as to why these brands do not want to open outlets in Kenya, simply because Kenyan’s do not like maintaining and taking quality seriously. Staff are never trained well and not enough money is put back to maintain the outlet. I had done an article on Quality Control sometime back -  Customer Service & Quality Control in Kenya.

Outlets like KFC spend millions of dollars a year perfecting customer service and quality control just so that their customers can be happy. No wonder they have over 600 Million customers yearly.

For me only one fast food chain does manage quality really well and also do live up to the term fast food and that is Mcfries. Mcfries has managed to maintain the same quality off food and service at all it’s out lets but yet lacks on the cleanliness.

The main fast food outlets in Kenya need to really style up, have their staff trained properly and should invest back into their outlets by maintaining them and coming up with new menus. They also need to look into ways of how they can speed up their services at the counter & deliveries and also become more efficient.

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:-

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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”.
4. 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.
5. 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.