Can you bounce back from a mistake in service?

This video clip says it all. Mistakes happen... how we recover from them determines what happens next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T54rQrMleA

Talk about Culture Shock!

After celebrating a year of being back in Kenya, after an “extended sojourn” in the States, everyone keeps asking me if I had major culture shock upon my return. Truth is, I did in some respects: obviously the whiff that hits you at JKIA is not that stellar, nor is the crazy driving and traffic, dust, bold pedestrians; just to mention a few. What did shock me, and catapulted me into this line of work, was the customer service. I can think of three good adjectives to describe it: non-existent, atrocious, horrid! And those are the nicer of the adjectives. I mean the things I have seen customers have to put up with would make me run for the hills and repeat would not be a word that precedes “customer” … ever!

The good news is, we are finally figuring out that the client experience has to be superb, otherwise the more savvy customers will simply take their business next door without so much as a word of feedback.

I recently did a 2 hour slot on Easy FM and talked about the top few most nightmarish customer experiences I had. So I thought I’d share them with you. Some of this stuff is unbelievable.

• 1.      Having a waiter ask to check my handbag because he swears he gave me my change, and I am incorrect in demanding for my change! Who does that? I know men who have been married for years, and still have no clue just what lies in that “mystery bag” and they remain rightfully afraid of the unknown. And now a waiter wants to check my bag for the change?  
• 2.      Having a waitress come and ask for the wine glass in exchange for a plastic cup because “the head waiter needs that glass to measure wine for other customers.” You have no business being in the restaurant business if you actually allow this to go on in your establishment. Furthermore, just how much are wine glasses at the local supermarket?
• 3.      Watching an old lady in a walker wait for over 10 minutes to be sat at a table. We eventually took on the role of the staff and offered her a seat at our table. Technically, that should be illegal, and punishable by fine!
• 4.      Begging a waitress to cancel an order for 3 glasses of wine and give us a whole bottle (you would think as a business owner this is more money, but hey…) and her telling us that the order cannot be reversed unless the barman agrees. Well how about we cancel the whole thing and go elsewhere? There was always that option dear J
• 5.      Seeing a cashier at one of the top telecommunications outlets roll her eyes at a customer because he didn’t understand how to activate a new line. She proceeded to bump him off the line and serve the other clients behind him, without explanation. To quote the gentleman, “customer service in this country sucks!”
• 6.      Yet another telecommunications retailer accuses the customer of “switching the SIM card in the modem” and trying to get them to replace it for her free of charge. “Madam, you must have gone home and switched them out.”  What’s with the assumptions? I hear this all the time, people being told what they “must have” done. I mean short of being omnipresent, just exactly how do you know what I did and didn’t do before I walked into your store?
• 7.      Sitting at a popular coffee house for over 1 hour and 20 minutes after I finished my tea, with not so much as “Ma’am, are you ok? Can I get you anything else?” but you know what? I am perfectly happy to sit there and use your Wi-Fi free of charge, no problem at all!
• 8.      Going into a telecommunications outlet (are we getting a trend here of the top worst performers? J) explaining the problem I am having, and the employee says that he thinks I am mistaken, that the problem I am experiencing is actually not the one. One word for you: “huh?” So now, not only are we assuming things like theft and fraud, but also customer stupidity?
• 9.      Giving my visa card to an employee to swipe, he automatically rolls his eyes, flings the card back across the counter to another employee, who disappears with it to God knows where (T.I.A… land of major credit card fraud, please get a mobile machine like most other retailers do and bring it to the customer. It builds credibility), and then gives me this look that suggests I am really inconveniencing him by not paying cash! I mean really?  You would have thought I am his small sister and he is paying my bill!
• 10.   This one takes the cake: being SHUSHED, yes you are reading right.. As in “shhhhhhh!!!” by a bathroom attendant who rudely informed us that we were making too much noise in her place of employment. I think that if you work in a club, you are to expect a certain level of noise. Now if we were chattering away at the National Library bathroom, I would understand her discomfort. Furthermore, when did it become okay to speak to patrons this way? More often than not it does no good to give feedback to the management. There are no consequences for such behavior so it is reinforced, and repeated.

There is a popular saying about service by Gene Buckley; “Don’t try and tell the customer what he wants. If you want to be smart, be smart in the shower. Then get out, go to work and serve the customer.” There is no room for emotions, personal preferences and unprofessional behavior on the job.  There are too many “smart” employees, and sometimes managers who are ruining the customer experience. Most people just say This Is Africa, so what do you expect? It might be Africa alright, but if we are aspiring to ever catch up with first-world countries especially on the business front, we have to “pull up our socks“! J