THE ECONOMY NOT THAT BAD, IT’S OUR CUSTOMER SERVICE THAT SUCKS

The other day a friend went to get some studio photos taken. She wanted the hard copies for framing and the soft copies sent to her email address. The proprietors assured her that her photos would be sent by end of business and she should check for her framed copies in a few days.

Three days later – the day she was supposed to check on the framed pictures, nothing in her email.

Oh! Can we get back to you, the lady said in response to her call inquiring about progress. They never got back.

She called again, Uhm! Our computer crashed we are now working on them, should have them by end of day. That was two days ago.

When government, multilateral donor agencies, analysts report that Uganda’s growth remains strong, our knee jerk reaction is to dismiss them with a jeer.

Where is the growth, we ask. Nga we don’t see it!

But how much economic activity are we letting sprint out the doors of our businesses with our indifferent, negligent and more often than should be, hostile treatment of our clients – potential or current?...

Anyone who has been in sales knows it is much cheaper to hold on to present clients than to try and woo new ones your way – in effort, time and even money. And yet we continue to treat people seeking to patronise our establishments as if we are doing them a favour.

We are caught in a time warp we need to free ourselves from.

Thirty, twenty even ten years ago traders and businessmen were getting away with outlandish markups on their goods and services. They could do this because there was a general scarcity of everything from blue band to hair pieces to seat belts and virtually no competition.

Not only could they get away with extortionist pricing, traders didn’t have to be nice to their customers and they didn’t. Customer service was the exception rather than the rule.

Which reminds me.

Many years ago some friends and I went for lunch at Alligators, which used to be situated at the corner of Kampala and Kyagwe roads. The lady who took our order was young and easy on the eye. 

But that was not the point, she had no pen or notebook. After taking three or four totally disparate orders, one of our number stopped to ask whether she wouldn’t forget our orders. She said no she would remember.

He warned her that if she bungled the orders, she would not hear the last of it. She politely agreed and continued taking the orders. We might have been seven or eight of us.

After a few minutes wait she returned, a trolley in tow, on it our orders.

She proceeded to distribute the orders with precision, never once faltering or stopping to ask, who’s was the mushroom pepper steak with ice cream?

You could have heard a pin drop when she set the last order down.

Needless to say she was not there the next time we went. She must have been snapped up by a businessman who knew a customer service asset, when he saw one.

Client psychology is not difficult to decipher.

We return again and again to a shop, restaurant or car wash, even if they are charging above market because we were treated well and with consideration. And even when we cut our budgets to fit our cloth in economic hard times, we will gravitate towards the place where customer service was best no matter the cost.

While this is a text book cliché, it is amazing how it is not wired into our business practices.

So when customers come only once to your business and never come back or turn at the door because they can immediately feel the bad vibes and we miss business, we then start wondering about this mythical economic growth....

It has been a hard five or so years, everybody has been suffering a cash squeeze, as activity In the oil & gas sector petered out, government embarked on its ambitious infrastructure drive and plugged many holes through which they were leaking money (read, corruption).

But look around you, there are companies that have not only survived during this down turn but have continued to thrive.

While it might be that they saved for the lean times during the proverbial seven years of feasting, more often than not you will find that they treat those who walk through their doors like people not ledger entries or mere statistics, and we the customers repay them with continued patronage of their businesses.

The saddest thing about giving good customer service is that it’s rare that people will sing your praises from the rooftops, but what is also true is that if you treat a customer badly they will tell everybody who gives them half an ear, about your lousy touch.

So whenever someone tells me their business is struggling, that the economy is in the toilet, I can’t help it, I wonder how their customer service measures up.