‘Customer-scare’ on the rise

Customer care and customer service have become buzz words for nearly every business entity across the world. Every organisation promises to put the customer first and to bend over backwards to satisfy the customer’s needs.

Reading mission statements of most organisations or indeed their brand promises, one can easily conclude that gone are the days when businesses took customers for granted.

In customer service there is a saying that a “customer is king”. In the spirit of gender equality, I may add that the customer is “queen”. Whoever coined this statement had in mind the fact that in whatever business organisations and individuals operate, the focus should be to exceed expectations of the customer or consumer.

However, on a sad note and closer home, I notice a lack of honesty on the part of many businesses in terms of delivering their promises. Many organisations have brilliant brand promises which, however, tend to betray the quality of the very services they exist to offer.

If customer care is defined as a system in a business venture that seeks to maximise customers’ satisfaction in terms of service and customer service is the process of providing goods and services to consumers, then I dare say that in Malawi many organisations are developing a culture of ‘customer-scare’ and ‘customer disservice’.

Several cases abound to illustrate my case. For example, not long ago, customers of commercial banks in the country were asked to provide their details to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. It was called Know Your Customer (KYC). In that exercise, customers were required to provide information such as their sources of income, residential and business addresses, contact telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

I thought that was a good initiative to bridge the gap between banks and customers. I was wrong! If the conduct of one of the commercial banks in the country is anything to go by, I think customers have a case to find out what the information they earlier provided is used for.

Here is a bank which raised the minimum book balance for savings accounts from roughly K1 000 to K5 000 and did not care to inform its “esteemed” customers of the change. Many customers had a rude awakening at auto-teller machines when they went to withdraw funds to discover their deposits were K4 000 less. And this is no cheap money in a country where the cost of living is rising by the day. What happened to communication? This is a typical case of taking customers for granted. The end result? The bank was forced to open new accounts for “aggrieved” customers, with a lower minimum balance but, not known to many customers, with a higher service charge which will see them paying K7 000 per year.

Then we have the telecommunications sector where operators feel they have the licence to “annoy” subscribers. The other day I complained about “intrusive” text messages generated by cellphone operators and usually sent to subscribers’ phones at awkward hours. My plea then was that consumers should be given a choice on whether to receive such unsolicited promotional texts.

The fact that operators have the privilege to know our phone numbers should not be a warrant for them to torture us through bombarding our phones with unsolicited texts. Some operators attempted to give subscribers a choice to deactivate the intrusive SMSs, but this was short-lived as the texts resurfaced faster than they disappeared.

Phone network operators should also improve the customer service in call centres so that they live up to their names and not be the “customer trauma centres” some of them are. Some of the responses customers are given for their queries in some of the so-called customer care centres leave one wondering what happened to courtesy and whether the officers realise that it is the customers who pay their salaries!

Some hotels are not spared the rot either. The other day, I overheard a waitress asking a customer who had ordered a cup of black coffee: “Black coffee wakeyo abwere ndi cold kapena hot milk? [You want the black coffee served with cold or hot milk?]” Five or so years ago, a friend told me of the treatment he got at one upmarket hotel in Blantyre where, upon placing an order for a drink, the bar tender, before serving him, sacarstically said: “Ndi K400 umodzitu! [It’s K400 per bottle].” The tone was like to tell him “you cannot afford!” Do not judge a book by its cover…

Please, give customers service that exceeds their expectations. Avoid taking customers for granted.

Feedback: amchulu@mwnation.com