It’s 9.45 am as you step into a cab to ferry you to the airport in time for your 1.30 pm flight to a crucial and strategic meeting set up by your company with an important business partner. Two-and-a-half hours later, you are still stuck in a traffic impasse 25 kilometres away from the airport. In order not to miss your flight, you shove you pride in your back pocket and climb on a motorcycle to complete the otherwise one-hour-and-twenty-minutes journey.
“Tuck!” Your okadaman hits the bumper of a car in front of him and a heated word battle ensues. Not being in the mood to witness the resultant fiasco, you quickly settle the okadaman and pick up another bike. At this point, you have just about one hour to make it to the airport. However, you arrive the airport at 12.45 pm and queue up at the check-in counter. When it gets to your turn, the attendant takes one look at your ticket and without looking up from her computer informs you that the ‘counter’ (as they call it) has been closed. You are aghast!
*******
Hold that thought… and rewind… Krshhhhhhhh……krshhhhhhh…….!!!
*******
Another scenario, you are driving to the airport to catch a flight and mistakenly, you took a road that is supposed to be “one-way.” Of course, there were no road signs to indicate that it was not a double lane and so you run straight into the traps of the local authorities. You vehemently refused to offer any form of facilitation (in fact, you have already contacted your lawyer). Because of all these delays, you finally arrive the airport at about 12.45 pm. Fast-forward ……Grrhhhhh….!!!
*******
“Oga,” the attendant says, still without looking up at you. “The counter has been closed. The flight was overbooked. There is nothing we can do about it.”
“Wait a minute! Missed flight? Overbooked…! WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT? You wonder, so you trudge on in your most placating voice.
“Like I said,” she rolls her eyes, “there is nothing I can do about it.”
“Okay, so when’s your next flight?” you ask. At this point, you are still hoping for a reasonable outcome.
“I don’t know.” She sighs. By now, you are almost boiling. “Go upstairs and ask.” This time, she really looks at you like she would an annoying fly perching on her food. She sees you are confused. “When you get to that staircase,” she huffs on, “go to the second door on your left and ask them for the next flight.”
This time, you really lose it!
Gbam!
You bang your clenched fist on the counter and bellow at everyone.
Do you find the pictures painted above somewhat familiar? I’m sure you do. It is appalling that in our country Naija, most public institutions and a great number of the private ones lack effective customer service orientation. Many corporate establishments seem to view customers as just the means to making money, they treat people as dirt and filth and with very little regard.
I witnessed a funny incident (though not so amusing at the time) last weekend. I’d just stepped into one of the popular shopping malls in Victoria Island to do some grocery shopping when I heard a fiftyish-looking man, (obviously livid at one of the attendants), yelling and pointing at an attendant, “sack herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! Sack herrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! I say sack her!!! I am sick of this country where frontline officers look down on their customers. You find them in banks, public offices, on the buses, everywhere….”
It is especially hard for someone like me who has worked as a customer service professional to transact business with a firm and be treated with far less dignity and regard than I should get. It is ironical that Nigerians, who are voted as one of world’s happiest people, are so quick to burst into flames of anger at their customers - the source/channel of their income! If you make the lethal error of haggling prices with a market woman who is still seething from a disagreement with a fellow market woman (sometimes, 60 minutes before you came ooo), you’d understand what says the time! Hahahahaha. You don’t want to get into that argument! Scram! Fast!!
In Nigeria, the customer is not the king. The customer is not the raison d’etre for the business. The business owner is the lord and master and he can afford to treat his customers shabbily after all, Naija people don’t even know what it means to be treated respectably, so, they neither expect nor demand it. one last word to businesses: please don't let bad customer service ruin your business.
Those are my views, what’s yours?
xoxo
abydarl
I couldn't agree more Abby,
ReplyDeleteIt seemed as if you were just replaying some 'movies' that I watched at a bank (Finbank) on Monday. The teller carelessly replied a customer who got angry that she had kept him waiting for so long just to cash a cheque. She told him that his Id card she sent to the photocopier had not returned. The young man asked when it would return, and she replied snubbishly "I don't know". And when he probed further in anger, the lady teller told him to endeavour coming with photocopy of his Id the next time he was coming to the bank...She started feeling cool with herself as she tried to get into a gossip with a customer she seemed familar with. But the young man impressed me when he bluntly but politely told her what she did was wrong. I stood there speechless and controlled my own temper...Nija must survive. Thumbs up dear for this piece!
"you shove you pride in your back pocket..." I fell in love with this expression. The picture painted here is vivid. it is what I see everyday. Have I done something that looked like the above? let me think....
ReplyDeleteWell spoken abydarl...come companies forget that the customer is the reason they are in business. If only some front-line officers can think like this, naija will be a better place.
ReplyDeleteI've had such experiences myself where I almost behaved like the irate man you described above. Curtsy in business and personal dealings is so important and could make the difference between a crude business and a world class company. It begins with empathising with people and been courteous despite all. Great work, Abby! Bring it on!
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