Power Ideaz

by Chitralekha Chakraborty

Customers are left disappointed by the lack of basic knowledge of the goods on sale, lack of initiative and a general failure to ascertain their needs by the customer service providers. Customer satisfaction levels will make or break retailers in the UAE’s new service economy. “The retail sector is fiercely competitive now and will become more so, and it will be service that decides the winners” said Spicer.

Good customer service and retailing need to anticipate customer demands in line with the modern consumer science. “Today’s consumer is more aware than the consumer of five years before, which creates immediate need for staff training and a stronger infrastructure in customer services, which the GCC market really lacks” — Lootah told Gulf News.

Salim Kalsekar Rasasi, perfumes managing director said businesses tend to neglect the fact that they need to maintain “uniform quality across every level of customer service” amid pressures posed by expansion in the retail sector.

“The expansion of the retail sector has put immense pressures on quality of personnel and their attitude management. While it is good to have a fast growing brand, it is equally important to maintain uniform quality across every level of customer service. I think businesses tend to neglect this which undermines their performance in the long run” — Kalsekar said.

Product knowledge and pro-activity levels of staff were relatively low, as 41.0 percent of them did not ask supplementary questions to establish customer needs; 41 percent did not recommend or guide shoppers to a relevant product and 46.2 percent did not check if the customer had the product or information required.

Shoppers reported mixed impressions of staff attitudes, saying 38.1 per cent of the staff did not smile and 22.4 percent were considered unfriendly.

On the bright side, 93.3 percent of the shoppers reported a clean environment and 85.2 percent found the outlet they visited to be clutter-free.

Response times were found to be good, as 71.4 percent of the customers said they were assisted within three minutes of entering an outlet, and 51 percent of those purchasing products were served in less than one minute.

No wonder when you fly on a Chinese airline you will be pampered by flight attendants who look eerily alike. They are young, beautiful and practically the same height. This is not a coffee-tea-or-me stereotype but the result of a rigorous selection process that is more beauty pageant than equal-opportunity job interview.

—    If you are older than 24 don’t bother to apply.
—    If your legs are similar to tree trunks don’t call. Sounds like a throwback to the dark ages of workplace discrimination?
—    In China, the world’s fastest-growing aviation market, entry barriers for flight attendants are not only tolerated – they are flaunted as symbols of excellence.

“A lot of Chinese passengers judge the quality of airlines based on the quality of their flight attendants, meaning, are they pretty or not pretty” Luo Man said, a media director at China Southern, the country’s largest carrier.

Chinese airline officials say their industry is young and that it will take time for the public to move beyond the superficial. Until recently traveling by air was a privilege reserved for government officials and very rich people.

The first flight attendants were picked not so much for their looks as for their political reliability.

But that is changing fast.

As the Chinese get richer, domestic air traffic could soar nearly fivefold in two decades, analysts said. To meet the demand, China will have to buy about 3,400 new aircraft, quadrupling the present fleet and making the nation the second-largest aviation market in the World after the US.

Demand for new flight attendants is so great that a cottage industry of academies promising to produce star-quality cabin crews has emerged. The courses can range from etiquette and psychology to Basic English and geography. Once flight attendants are hired by the airlines, they typically receive additional safety and emergency training.

By Chitralekha Chakraborty

The world is full of slogans, seminars and books that focus on customer service. We understand that excellent customer service increases customer loyalty, which in turn boosts profitability and drives growth. Then why is customer service so often still so poor? It’s a question of moving from attitude to action. This introductory note stresses some hard facts which probe why customer service is still mediocre at best in so many organizations.

What was your latest customer service mantra?
– “The customer is always right.”
– “The customer comes first.”
– “This is the year of the customer.”

Have you had a recent customer appreciation week, given all employees lapel buttons stating “Yes, I can” to reflect their empowered attitude? Most organizations have involved their employees in a slogan or a customer service seminar. Everyone in management has bought and perhaps read the latest books on service. Most of those books, slogans and seminars seem to create the right attitude, yet no meaningful action follows. Words, including these in this piece, don’t create improvements. Informed action does.

The best people and companies know this. They have come to understand the links, connecting excellent customer service, customer loyalty, organizational growth and profitability. They know that the key to their long-term success is changing the organization’s culture to one that prizes customer loyalty.

Although it’s true that service by itself does not guarantee loyalty, without it you greatly reduce your chances of retaining customers — the basis for building and sustaining growth and prosperity of organizations.

In the United States I see three levels of service being delivered. Those three are rude, indifferent and exceptional. Of these three, which do you mostly receive? “Indifferent” gets my vote.

Here’s one of my recent encounters with indifference. While I was renting a car, the customer service agent folded the rental contract, told me how to find my car and in which space, and then said “Thank you, Ms. Ford?” The misstatement indicated robotic, indifferent service. It also told me that this company does not have a culture that values me (and perhaps you) as its customer.

Most organizations are great in processing customers. Very few excel at serving and satisfying customers. We get processed all the time. Go to the bank and make a deposit. In most cases you get exactly what you expect — a correct receipt for your deposit and the amount of money you requested. Had anything occurred to leave you with a positive impression of the bank that would keep you loyal? It may be most unlikely . Perhaps your teller did not acknowledge you by name or thank you. May be the employees talked among themselves.

Exceptional service and satisfaction are required to create loyal customers. The process of being served is what’s memorable. That personalized transaction is the key to customer retention.

Customer service is not enough. Customer satisfaction that leads to loyalty is the goal. “Loyalty” means you retain a customer and increase the business you do with that customer, developing a relationship so this customer will not be lured away to the competition with the promise of a lower price.

Almost everyone knows the research and statistics, a few take the numbers to heart. Research done some years ago tells us it costs five or six times more to attract a new customer than to keep a current one. Experts estimate the cost today as being closer to eight to ten times. Bain & Company reports that if a company retains 5% of its current customer base, its profits will increase between 25% and 125%! Have you noticed how many companies spend their time, money and energy to attract new customers, while doing very little to keep their current customers? Although it’s a fairly common practice, it’s very short-sighted.

Here’s a scenario that has probably happened with you last year. Let’s say it’s 7 o’clock in the evening and you have just sat down to dinner. The telephone rings. You answer and discover it’s just one of the long-distance telephone carriers offering a great deal with plenty of incentives to entice you to become a new customer. You stop the representative and say “Time out! You already are my long-distance carrier.” The rep responds “Oops!!” Then you asked “Well, can I have that deal as an existing customer?” And the answer is “No”. The offer is only for a new customer, and not for you, an established customer.

It’s amazing how few organizations have figured out that marketing to current customers is good business. What about your organization? Does it work as hard to build the loyalty and business of current customers as it does to attract new ones? Write your experiences as a customer or rep — help me to reach closer to customer service in depth.

By Chitralekha Chakraborty

I want to share a little known secret about the value of delivering good service to customers. Yes, it’s good for business and the organization. Yes, you may derive a lot of satisfaction by doing a customer service job well. No question. But what’s the most compelling reason to learn about, and deliver good customer service? It’s this. When you deliver good customer service to your customers, you experience less stress, and less hassle and grief from customers. They argue less. They’re much less likely to insult, and they’re less demanding. They don’t threaten you when they get upset (I’ll have your job!”).

You can save huge amounts of time. One disappointed customer may take up to ten or twenty times more of your time than a satisfied one. And the time spent with the displeased customer is usually not all that much fun. Customer service skills help you keep your happy customers happy, help prevent customers from becoming unhappy and taking out their frustrations on you, and help you deal effectively and quickly with customers who are upset and unhappy.

Every Tuesday I will write about the tools to interact with customers more effectively, so that the company, the customer, and you, the person dealing with the customer, all benefit. PowerIdeaz.com will provide us the space to discuss all those; and here will continue worlds first “Tuesday is the Customer Service Day” Blog. Hence, we will not restrict our discussion only on the principles or platitudes, or handy customer service slogans; rather our focus will also be on ‘doing’.
• What should you do with a customer who is swearing at you?
• What do you do to prevent customers who have waited a long time from getting really angry?
• What do you do to provide advice to customers so it will be heard and appreciated?
We’ll deal with these questions along with solutions.

Next week I’ll cover some basics of customer service; so customer service newbies can increase their understanding of what customers want, and the things that cause customers to hit the roof. We’ll also talk about various types of customers (internal, external, paying and non-paying), and we’ll explain how you can best use customer service techniques.

Far too much customer service training and far too many customer service books tell you only what you already know. Do you really need to be told again that you should smile? Or shake hands? No. But you might find it useful to know when it’s a bad idea to smile at a customer.

So, here’s the bottom line about this “Tuesday is the Customer Service Day” blog: you may come across a few things you already know. But you’ll also come across a number of techniques you probably haven’t thought about. Please do leave comments here with any unique, off the wall, follow-up tactics that have worked for you; and along the way, save yourself a lot of hassle and a lot of grief.