Do you know the importance of providing a good service to customers? Generally, as a practice or a formality, we see a dedicated department for customer service in many organisations. Is it really an active unit or established just for the sake of showing off and deceiving customers? It might not be adequately serving the target audience. Then, there is no point in having it if it adds no value to the business.
Serving customers is unfortunately not accorded high importance in some organisations nowadays. This is very obvious to most of you, perhaps to those who have experienced unpleasant service or treatment.
Believe it or not, people are badly treated and served, although they pay or have already paid for the service or a product. What is frustrating is that you might get inappropriately treated in a commercial organisation where employees are assigned to serve their customers.
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, had said: “Get closer than ever to your customer. So close, in fact that you tell them what they need well before they realise it themselves.”
Just imagine that one day you are about to buy a product, but because of the bad customer service or offensive attitude of the promoter or salesperson, you change your mind. Possibly, you might even hate that shop or brand for the unpleasant experience you had. Such incidents happen every so often when the sales executive or service provider doesn’t really care whether he gets a customer on that day or not.
It is true that “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it”. Therefore, if employees think about that, they will definitely do things differently. In fact, they are not fully aware of the significance behind well and satisfying customer service and its impact on people.
Mahatma Gandhi was absolutely right when he said, “The customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him. He is not an interruption to our work, but he is the purpose of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
We all have different stories about when we were treated exceptionally well or extremely poorly. Usually, we likely tend to share these extraordinary stories and abnormal experiences with colleagues, friends or family.
For that reason, we all recognise the influence of the word-of-mouth marketing as it can be the absolute best advantage or the worst downside for a company.
If truth to be told, what organisations are not aware of is a proper customer service so that their customers are pleased. Today, it is getting customers’ satisfaction which matters more than just providing him/ her a service or a product. Thus, organisations need to be more focused on satisfying their customers by exceeding their expectations and giving them first-class service. As Bill Gates advised, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”
Organisations shall have customer satisfaction department instead of customer service. Customers need to be satisfied more than just served so you have them on your side to promote your brand, product or service.
Dear customer service executives or agents, just remember only good service makes the difference. Loyal customers don’t just come back and don’t simply recommend you, but they insist that their friends do business with you.
It’s customer satisfaction, not service.
Abdulaziz Al Jahdhami
aljahdhami22@gmail.com
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