COVID-19 BITES CUSTOMER SERVICE

Since March, the world as we know it has not been the same. Despite the lockdowns being relaxed, we are still struggling to find ourselves back to the ‘old normal’. 

This has had varying antagonistic effects on customer service and experiences in the same period. Such bland effects need to be mitigated, uprooted and swiftly replaced with positive skills. The train needs to be dragged back on the rails. Once it is off the rails it is on the trail to destruction. A business with poor customer service is a none existent one. But the effects have snowballed over the past few months to the state that they are. Concentration levels are low at service places and people just need to recharge themselves. 

Look at it this way. It takes three weeks to learn a new habit. Probably almost the same amount of time to lose an acquired, yet unpracticed skill. We have been in a new way of living for six months now. There has been a lot of learning and unlearning. This has both been on a family and business level. Sadly on the commercial front, any unlearning is costly. 

regular practice

At home parents of lower grades pupils will tell you of the struggles they have with their children’s handwriting now that they do not have regular practice. The extended version of holidays has converted some to almost illiterate if they have not been regularly doing the homework posted to them. 

This is the same case with customer service. You get rusty. Yet customer service is the soul of any business. Customer service is the business. The other day, on a live feed by the Entrepreneurship World Cup, to which I am affiliated to as a mentor, there was a speaker on the topic of customer acquisition and retention.

So the quote I picked on the day there went as such, “It is more expensive to find a new customer than it is to keep one.” Later that day I tweeted that businesses need to ensure that their staff are mentally resilient in the COVID-19 era and also play their part in saving the businesses with great customer service.

impact caused

Due to the impact caused by COVID-19 on small and medium-size enterprises, Southern African Research Foundation for Economic Development(SARFED) projects highlighted that more than half (50 percent) of the Eswatini based SMEs might go out of business by the year 2021. Scary numbers and if we do not play our part in removing the excess water collected in the storm, the boats will indeed sink. It is a collective responsibility, not only that of the business owner.

I will declare my interest in the subject matter that I have been selected to be one of the speakers for the upcoming Eswatini Customer Experience Conference next month. Those close to me will tell you I deeply value a great customer experience. Who does not though? 

having ordered

The other day, having ordered orange juice (we need that Vitamin C fix) at an eatery in Mbabane, I waited for over 20 minutes to get it at my table. I stood up and asked the waitress where my order was and she said she would bring it. She did. Later I ordered still water, not sure why they call it still water because it moves, but that is a topic for another day. She never gave me that still water. It is still with her as I type this. 

As I went to pay for the orange juice, I asked why she had not checked on my table through the day. She said, “To be honest Sir, I completely forgot about your table.” There. After all these years of trying to be a memorable, cheerful, bubbly person, I was forgotten. 

After working hard to always make an impression in any room I enter, this young lady forgot me. Vanish. Forgot. I am still hurt. 

Horst Schulze, one of the speakers at the 2018 Global Leadership Summit says he would quote the name of a bank teller that gave him bad service for many years at every seminar he was invited to. 

He would quote her name and surname in his example pack. Of course he says he later forgave her but he was illustrating how the scars of bad service live on customers. I still remember how at one fast food they gave me my order 40 minutes late. It has been five months and I have not bought food from there since then. 

disappointed

As I took my order, I told them how disappointed I was that I chose them over their competitor who had a long line the same day. But had I stayed on the line I would have been served in 20 minutes. 

To date I still go to the competitor. They lost me as a customer. I may not be a E200 fast food customer but multiply me with 100 others at E50 and you have a business losing E5 000 a week and E20 000 a month (probably rent money) and eventually E240 000 in a year. No fast food businesses can afford such easily avoidable losses.   

But the pandemic presents a challenge for business owners to ensure that they invest in the positive mindset of their staff. It is more important now than ever to also give them random trainings or even call them in to watch motivational You Tube videos on World Class service. This will ensure that they do not take their eyes of the prize. Because if they do, the car they are driving will crash. Most importantly, business owners need to act on customer feedback.

COVID-19 is said to attack weak immune systems more and so there is a need to boost immunity. The same with customer service, you need to always supplement it with trainings to ensure COVID-19 effects do not bite and destroy your business.

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