THE TELEPHONE SITTERS AND CUSTOMER CARE

Gbovuga, I haven’t been inspired to write lately about this topic, but several things have happened recently to make me sit by my pregnant monitor. Before I dive into today’s topic of choice, I’d like to thank the folks who have continued to check my blog even when it’s been void of new content. I never thought so many people would be interested in what I have to share.

I am not that happy of writing about this topic of customer care because it is a tricky area with its own complication which needs extra circumspection so you don’t find yourself doing a marketing job for competitors of organization that will be under discussion.

Gbovu, people who know me, know that I am generally a nice and fair person. I also exhibit high tolerance and then a hot temper! I’ve found that social media like ‘face book’ have been an enabler, driving a change in my behavior. I have come to expect high-quality, fast customer care with “care” entailing both service and solutions because I feel having an open mind is the best way of addressing ones frustration organizations who provide  products and service to the public.

Gbovuga, my frustration began last Wednesday when I tried to connect my modem to enable me update my blog and do some reading on the latest in town and o... to also update my ‘face book’ status but that was not to be as the modem consistently and annoyingly put up massage ‘connection terminated, redial or cancel. Connection terminated and I should redial or cancel? I asked myself.

Gbovu for almost thirty minutes I was just babysitting my modem redialing with no head way of a solution. So, finally I made a call to the call centre and for the purpose of this article I will not mention the name of my service provider. After getting through to the call centre, I narrated my story and I was promised to it will be solve ‘very soon’ but hey that was a total wipe-out.

To make it short, the very soon ended up in the next day after I kind of turned into a serial complaint over a night since I realized my calls where not being picked after calling the call centre more than a dozen times.

According to Lancaster el al (1999), customer care “is aiming to close the gap between customers’ expectation and their experience”. And every marketing student is well abreast with this definition. The explanation to this definition is that the level of a customers’ satisfaction is the difference between what type of service he or she expects to be given, and what he or she   actually gets in the form of service. Secondly, a customers’ experience affects his or her level of satisfaction. 

Gbovu, the fact that finally the problem I was having with my modem connection was solved is not the case. My case and the point is the number of hours it took and the frustrations I experience during the process. Apparently, you have one person at a call centre who poses to you with different name anytime you call. At a point the same voice is Peter, Mike, and John and then you have Kwesi, Joe, Ebenezer all clearly having the same voice and these fake characters will talk to you as if your complaint is new to them and the famous line they use is ‘your complaint will be forwarded and thank you for choosing our network we appreciate it Bla! Bla! Bla!

Gbovu, I must admit that taking care is not that easy but how many times must customers suffer such treatment from such companies when customers’ activities pay for almost everything in the organization. My heart goes out to the customer care managers, public relation managers and marketing managers who had to explain why the big brand names said one thing but did entirely the opposite totally. 

Gbovu, vast fortunes are spent in customer service, trying to manage the most important part of any business transaction. The latest star on the lucrative customer care speaking circuit is an eccentric and massively successful online entrepreneur called Tony Hsieh who started the internet shoe store in the US called Zappos, selling his creation to Amazon for $887m in 2009.
Zappos grew from nowhere to become the biggest online shoe retailer mainly by being very accommodating to all its customers. An eternally jolly sales team inspired by Hsieh would gleefully exchange your purchases almost ad infinitum and ship for free until the shoe fit. That is expensive huh? But it made Zappos lots of money. 

The same cannot be said in Ghana, one of the telecom companies who pertly tell us that it is the biggest telecom company in Ghana and is said to be a believer in aggressive marketing openly gives out numbers as it customer care centre but, you try calling that customer care line if you will be successful. You won’t! While advertising this line as it calls centre it has a different number which is pre-paid. Gbovu, what it means is that to receive a help from them you have to pay. Can you believe that?

Gbovu, some of these characters known as operators are not trained properly on how to handle difficult clients and how to build client relationship. A story is told of how a frustrated operator blasted a client by telling the client that customer care does not work in Ghana and the customer should forget about the saying that the customer is always right.
Gbovu the problem of customer care does not only reflect in the telecom sector but it transcends to every sector of the corporate world.

The barrage from disgruntled and stymied customers is probably why the some companies are becoming wary of publishing their addresses. A while back they were happy to have their names and even their pictures on their site, in their adverts and elsewhere. 

Such transparency is now a rare thing. Customer care managers have had to take cover behind the company barricades hiding from Taliban customers who have been radicalised by the uncaring corporate shrug. 

This is bad for business because it serves to amplify the perception that managers are only interested in taking care of themselves. Maybe this is an opportunity for customer care representatives to come out of the shadows and play a more prominent role on the business frontline. Somebody has got to care.