Sitting before my PC on a rainy afternoon, why did I think I should write about of all the things …Customer Service! Well am not sure, but then, a recent experience with a major financial services provider had left a bad taste in my mouth. It then did strike me ---Who Am I to write on Customer Service? There are so many pundits who have written loads and loads on customer service, Corporate Heads, Ph.D’s and all the guys who have huddled up on the CRM bandwagon… What right or knowledge or experience did I have to comment on a topic like Customer Service? I stopped typing…looked out of my balcony into the gloomy weather …closed my eyes …and introspected…Enlightenment dawned… one need not be a Corporate Head, Ph.D or a subject matter expert to comment on customer service. The basic qualification that one needs is just to be a customer himself…Eureka!
Having passed the eligibility criteria, I was confident of my key strokes.
How can an organization be Customer oriented? Tough question? Well let’s see.
An organization can be customer oriented by realizing that they themselves too are customers. And in any transaction, if we look closely, the giver and the taker are both customers, how? The customer is “providing” an opportunity to the organization to serve him. Note the word providing. It means customer is the giver or provider of opportunity. The company reacts to that opportunity by servicing his needs and charging a fee for the same. This kind of an attitude is what is required when we talk about customer service. The latest developments in technology, with the ever increasing number of BPO’s, Call Centres, huge advertisement budgets etc, what are organizations trying to achieve? More opportunity…and “more” opportunity is provided by the customer.
INDIAN SCENARIO
In India, today, most of the so called service providers are taking people for granted. There are instances of such pathetic services that the Indian customer has resigned to his fate. The government has introduced consumer courts for such issues. But an average middle class working executive…does he have the time to pursue the case? He is already overwhelmed by the amount of time it takes in commuting to office and back and getting on with his daily chores. Now even if he manages to file a case there are smart lawyers which the organization can hire and hammer away the customer to invisibility. With the greed of making more and more profits some organizations keep the bare minimum of service professionals and most of the time these service professionals are so overburdened that it reflects in their attitude and behavior towards their customers. End of the day you pay for a service and get ill treated. It seems that the organization is doing a favor instead of an obliged service. Where does the customer go?
CORPORATES…WAKE UP
Corporates \ Service providers…Wake up! That car in which you are traveling would have been serviced by an engineer who would have availed of a service from your organization and might have been provided with a shoddy service. Isn’t it simple to understand that he might have serviced your car with such a disposition which in turn would adversely affect the way in which your car is serviced?. The law of karma does work and you get what you give. Tomorrow when you are busy making money if a voice of dissatisfaction is heard from a customer, stop counting your money and pay heed to what he has to say. You might be doing good to yourself.
Jayasreedaran Nair