Friday, March 4, 2011

ORGANIZATIONS HONOURED FOR EXCELLENCE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE




























The Founder of the GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARDS,Mr.Hector Wulff and some members of the awards team,under the auspices of the Customer Service Advocate Ghana, have payed courtesy calls to the award winners,and to present their awards with certificates to them at their business premises.This is a novelty and the first time that business awards are being presented and delivered, door to door at the work places of award winners encouraging a sense of belonging and good will, among their staff and the entire workers of the organization,instead of the usual awards ceremonies associated with dinner-dance and long speeches.
So far companies like ALLADSHAMS LIMITED,KINGS COLLEGE INTERNATIONAL, J.D RESTAURANTS,GHANA POLICE SERVICE,NATIONAL HEALTH INSURANCE AUTHORITY,BLET SERVICES LIMITED,AGBEVE HERBAL CENTRE, KRIF GHANA LIMITED, ASHANTI HOME TOUCH,CITY LIGHT GHANA LIMITED, PAPAYE FAST FOODS,T.T BROTHERS, O.A TRAVEL AND TOURS,HOLY TRINITY MEDICAL CENTRE/SPA AND HEALTH FARM, ANGE HILL HOTEL,SHOPRITE,FIRST CAPITAL PLUS LIMITED
RLG COMMUNICATIONS, ELECTROLAND GHANA LIMITED,BRITISH COUNCIL GHANA,NDK FINANCIAL SERVICE, IBURST AFRICA,IPMC,PEACE FM,PHC MOTORS,ZOOMLION LIMITED, DELCIELO OPTICAL,SPINAL CLINIC,KENYA AIRWAYS ,INCLUDING GLORYLAND FOODS, have been visited and presented with awards in recognition of their leadership in customer service and commitment to service quality, by the GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARDS TEAM.In all, the heads of these various reputable companies expressed their gratitude and and promised their support towards the sustainability of the GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARDS,towards the attainment of a national customer service culture,as the nation emerges as an oil economy and a business hub in Africa.
The Ghana Customer Service Awards has been designed to recognise, encourage and reward businesses in Ghana for their excellent treatment of, and positive attitude towards, their customers.
THE AIM OF THE GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARDS IS TO CELEBRATE EXCELLENCE AND PROFESSIONALISM IN CUSTOMER SERVICE DELIVERY. The Ghana Customer Service Awards is serving as platform showcase achievements in Customer Service delivered by a business or a service provider. Award rankings are in no way influenced by the opinion of the firms or their staff or sponsors. The awards seek to: 1) Encourage businesses in Ghana to raise their standard of customer service. 2) Reward businesses in Ghana that provide exceptional customer service.

FIRST GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE AMBASSADOR DECORATED






CHIEF YAW KUMEY HONOURED, AS GHANA'S FIRST CUSTOMER SERVICE AMBASSADOR.
Mr Yaw Kumey, Group Chief Executive Officer of Y. Kumey International Group of Companies,last Thursday, the 3rd of February 2011,was decorated and honoured as Ghana's first Customer Service Ambassador,the highest award category in the Ghana Customer Service Awards , for an individual in the private sector in pursuance of excellence in customer service in Ghana.
Chief Kumey was decorated and honoured for his commitment and selfless contribution towards the development of customer service in Ghana,in pursuit a national customer service culture,as the nation emerges as an oil economy and a business hub in Africa.
In his acceptance remark, Chief Yaw Kumey said he thought he had been working in vain but has now realised that his efforts have been recognised with the award. He impressed on the youth not to undermine their ability, since he is confident that the next generation will produce the country’s first billionaire and make it less dependent on foreign assistance.
This awards is an initiative of the CUSTOMER SERVICE ADVOCATE under the auspices of THE GHANA WRITERS AND NEWSPAPERS SOCIETY(GWANSO)
Headed by Mr. HECTOR WULFF, as the founder.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

MEET MR.CUSTOMER SERVICE




His name is Hector Wulff,popularly known as MR.CUSTOMER SERVICE, a consumer affairs journalist and a consultant who has been training customer service and business communications for five years,a prolific writer,marketer and great thinker who fears GOD.

MR. WULFF,indeed is the true face of customer service in Ghana,a leading authority on customer service,an advocate and campaigner of a national customer service culture.

He has written several articles on effective customer communications in several journals and of various websites both nationally and internationally,with most popular titles known to global customer service practitioners and communicators,as

THE POWER OF CUSTOMER SERVICE SERIES and

THE HIDDEN MAGIC IN SERVICE QUALITY.

Currently,MR,WULFF, is the FOUNDER of the CUSTOMER SERVICE ADVOCATE and the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF the GHANA WRITERS AND NEWSPAPERS SOCIETY,initiators of the GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARDS in consultation with GHANA'S MINISTRY OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY.

Hector Wulff is a member of national consumer protection stakeholders promulgating and advising government on the Ghana Consumer Protection Policy.

He is currently working on the

GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE PROJECT,which is a national customer service standardization initiative for both private and public sector service providers in Ghana towards the attainment of a

NATIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE CULTURE.

Early this year Mr.Wulff and his team will host the first

GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE SUMMIT and to launch the

GHANA CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE PROJECT.

THE CULTURE OF POOR COSTOMER SERVICE IN GTHANA --THE WAY FORWARD



Except those who donate blood voluntarily, one is either selling a service or a product for a living. Politicians, bankers, clerks, messengers, bus conductors, mortuary attendant, ticket agents, market women and everyone who provides a trade or service has a customer. So how do your customers think about your service?

As customers, have you been amazed by a service provider who gave you an outstanding service beyond and above his or her call of duty? I don't think so! If there was an Oscar or national Award for unfriendliness and customer dissatisfaction, it should go to the former Ghana airways, Ghana's vehicle licensing authority and hotel employees and every other service provider in Ghana. You can not find real customer service from these people. It is not part of their psyche to serve,they find no joy in it. Most of our service providers in Ghana behave as if they are doing their customers favors instead of rendering a service which is promised and paid for. Customer service has lost its impetus, for it is no longer an index measuring success of service providers. Customers have been pushed to the wall to accept the fact that as far Ghana is concerned the customer has no choice or voice other than to survive at the mercy of halfhearted service providers. Poor customer service is gradually becoming an accepted norm in our society.

Consequently, the Ghanaian business culture has created a class of people whose only creativity is to invent ways and means of milking the customer to the bone.

These service providers are afraid of responsibility and commitment to whatever business activity they are engaged in because being responsible and committed to their products or services call for a little bit of work they do not really want to do. They have designed their system to suit the convenience of the management and not the customer. Does the defunct Ghana Airways ring a bell? Take a trip to Ghana's ministries and you will have a feel of the how civil servants respond to duties. You will get a total picture of why it takes that long to clear your shipment from the ports. The response to emergency by nurses in our hospitals speaks for this issue. You will realize the attitude of most our nurses to duty is no different from boys scoutism or girls guideism. You will get to know that the Ghanaian nurse does not work with any urgency.Everything done by the nurse is at her own time.
A hairdresser fixes hair, isn't it? Increasingly, most businesses in Ghana do not even know what class of business they are engaged in, let alone to identify their customers and how to cultivate them. In fact, the next time you go into a saloon to get a hair cut ask the barber what business does him or she engage in. I promise you he or she would answer with something like this: I cut hair, or I do hair. From a customer point of view, a hairdresser is in the business of making his customers feel good and look good. In other words, he is selling beauty and good looks. The customers love to be showered with compliment.

Those in hospitality industry are not only supposed to sell comfort but to pamper their guests. A hotel room has to be the guest's most favorite place away from home. Therefore, it should bring him or her some amount of gratification and tranquility and all the comfort left at home. Anything less than these expectations are just a scheme to get something for nothing.

People have needs, and when you meet those needs you provide service for those who needs are met. The fact is that you have not only saved them the hassle of looking else where, but also what you offer them is unique as you treat them as cherished clients. Once you are able to do this the cost of your service or fees become irrelevant. Most customers are less concern about the price of goods and service instead the customer is very much cautious of what he or she gets in place of the amount paid. What they want is good service.

The upwardly mobile people are usually very busy. They want things done quickly and efficiently. The value of the service is not a major decision factor for the customer--- most especially those in the middle and upper classes of the social strata.

Anyone who works for a living has a customer. So regardless of the nature of your work, you have a customer. Lawyers call their customers clients, doctors call theirs patients, authors have readers and Actors call them the audience. The police officer may call his suspect or complainant/witness or both; I can guess that you are laughing! It does not matter what we call them, we must understand that customers are the most important aspects of any business because they can single-handedly determine the longevity and vitality of any business. The customer has the money. On the other hand, businesses are to provide services or offer their products of sale so that they can have a share of the customers money.

The customers decide whether you and your business will survive and how much money you can make. Customers also decide when to go to work and when to go home. So my question is this: Why does the Ghanaian business community pay so little attention and respect to this group of people which has so much power?

When was the last time a store attendant or a restaurant waitress asked for your cell phone number so that she could call you and thank you for the last patronage or the birth dates of your spouse and children for the purpose of having you come back? When was the last time a taxi driver in Ghana offered you his cell phone to make a quick phone call to a member of your family on your arrival at Kotoka Airport? When was the last time a taxi driver bought copies of the latest CD and gave them out to his passengers? How many times have you been in a hotel room in Ghana and the lousy and arrogant attendant knocked on your door to give you a toilet roll or a bed sheet? I wonder if he or she ever checked the room prior to your arrival. Why does he or she have to wait until you locked your door before you are offered the essentials that you are entitled to?

What will be your reaction if you picked your car from your mechanic and it is spotless-- waxed and polished? If you think that is too much for the Ghanaian mechanics what about receiving thank- you text message from a shop from which you bought your last new furniture? In any business little stuff matter. These little things should be taken care of if one wants to satisfy the customers.

A satisfied customer becomes a raving fan because he would become so excited about the way you treat him or her such that he or she becomes part of your sale force by telling everyone about your company.

Given our priorities customer service is not an important item on the Ghanaian national agenda. I wonder if we can honestly develop our indigenous resources if our most important resources people's needs -- are ignored. The tomb of the late Ghana Airways is littered with wreaths of curses from badly treated passengers. I wonder if the dissatisfied- customers pushed it down the cliff. You see, customers are always right. If you do not listen to them you would be forced to go into extinction.
Even the world's best most unique product cannot survive at a giveaway price, if that company or firm has no regard for its customers. Customers will gladly pay more for less when they have the confidence that they will be served well in the process.

Great customer- service is about:
1. Figuring out what your customers want
2. Getting it for them accurately, politely and enthusiastically with a smile.
3. Going extra mile and say hank you and be courteous.
Ghanaians are used to poor service why the need for great service?
Clues:
1. Ghanaian businesses need customers far more than the customers need them.
2. Great service is a sound marketing tool.
You don't have to get an MBA to know that the best advertising is done by mouth and that is free. Your customers would share the great service experience with their friends, neighbors and children.

3. Great service keeps customers coming back and when they come they don't come by themselves.

4. The company's finances look good if it provides great service because great service is directly linked to the company's bottom-line.

5. It makes for a better place to work. If a company provides great service it is almost guaranteed to produce a more enjoyable work place. It is amazing how the spirit of giving your customers a great service can be carried over into the way your employees relate to each other.

6. It helps the company to attract better people to work with because creating a better working environment through offering great service makes it attractive to quality job applicants.

7. It is easier to provide better service than trying to make things right to unhappy customers. It takes more time, energy and money to fix things than simply have them taken care of up front.

8. On practical and spiritual level, giving great service to your guests or customers makes you feel like you are making some small contribution to their lives .Yes; it will not cure the world and its pains. But if your service can put a smile in their lives that means you have contributed to make the world a better place, and that is not a small thing to sneeze at.

Also, acknowledging, apologizing and taking action to handle the customers complaints immediately are all very important parts of the customer service equation.

Causes of poor customer- service in Ghana:
a) We do not teach it in our schools and business world...
b) It is not respected by employers and co-workers to be customer service -oriented employee.
c) One need to go extra mile in cultivating customer service, unfortunately most employers and employees are lazy.
d) Great customer service requires different social skills like: humility, concern, empathy, thoughtfulness and ability to predict the needs of others and most people don't want to go through the trouble of acquiring all those skills they do not have.
e) Most people do not want to put their ego away and serve.
f) Employees are poorly treated. It is a well-known fact that employees will never treat their customers any better than their employers do. Customer service suffers when leadership forgets the need of its employees. Customer service only flourishes when employees have a degree of trust and respect for the management and the company.
g) There is no reward system to reinforce great customer service
h) Most companies fail to define what 'customer service' is because they don't even know the needs of their customers let alone to provide the needed service.
i) Arrogance, which is usually stems from delusion the belief that one is indispensable.

The case of a taxi driver:
If I were a taxi driver, I would always arm myself with maps of interesting places on my route so that I can give them to my passengers. I would be well-versed in quality service of the local hotels and restaurants that would suit my passengers budgets. On the hot days, I would make sure I have stocked my ice chest with cold bottled water in the trunk of my car in order to give them out to my thirsty passengers. It sounds very expensive but, I can guarantee its dividend is thousand fold. It would be a gesture my passengers arriving at the airport will not forget. We have to put originality into customer service. Alternatively, I will ask my passengers the music they want to hear, instead of playing what I like.

As a politician, a mortuary attendant, a chop- bar owner, a teacher, a carpenter or a musician, how much can you amaze your customers?
Speaking of customer- care, I hope am able to meet your customer - care expectations. However, as my good friend Kwame, who read the hardcopy of this article, jokes,the intended audience of this Gospel doesn't read from the net. I think he was right, so I urge you to spread it around like a disease so as not to make my crusade to inject some amount of customer-care into the system to be in vain.
Kwaku Adu-Gyamfi
NJ, USA
* The writer is a social commentator and the founder of Adu-Gyamfi Youth Empowerment, Educational and Apprenticeship Foundation, to help the youth of Asuom, in the Kwaebibrim district, E/R.

CUSTOMER SERVICE IN GHANA- A FAR CRY FROM EFFICIENCY


By Nana Kwame Asante Owusu-Sekyere

It is sad to note that the quality of customer service in Ghana leaves much to be desired. First of all, it is very difficult to reach most offices and public buildings by telephone. Telephones ring endlessly without any response whatsoever. If one is lucky, the call is answered after the sixth or seventh ring with a localised American southern drawl, "yedooooww!!"

This is not because the offices are closed for lunch, empty or closed for the day. I found to my utter surprise that one such office, which I had tried endlessly to reach one whole morning, had all the staff at post. After several attempts to reach them by telephone had failed, I drove over, stood in front of the office, called from my cell phone and it was unbelievable! The endlessly ringing telephone was actually nobody's business and the staff just couldn't be bothered!

A slightly interesting variation to this is that sometimes the telephone would be engaged for a while, and suddenly the call goes through. To one's utter dismay the telephone would ring several times till it finally cuts off, which makes one wonder whether it wasn't the same number, which was constantly engaged less than five minutes ago.

In more efficient business environments, telephones are answered after the second ring if there are people in the office. This is because after the third ring the call is directed to voicemail or if the number is for both telephone and fax, the fax tone automatically switches on. The question is, Does the Ghanaian customer service staff perceive prompt answering of calls as a relevant and integral part of good customer service? Does he or she know what that means to the customer?

Promptly answering the customer's call means prompt attention to your customer. It could further be translated to mean that your company is readily available when the customer needs you. It improves the customer's perception of your company's reliability, and promptness in handling customer queries and requests.

Even if the service delivered itself falls below the customer's expectation or exact satisfaction, the ease with which you were reached, and your readiness to assist leaves a very positive impression on your customer, which in the long run, affects corporate image and the market positioning and perception of the quality of your service (or product).

A second outstanding trait of customer service in Ghana is the typical "I am doing you a favour" mentality. Basically it is perceived that the customer needs something done for him or her and is therefore at the mercy of the whims and caprices of the customer service staff.

This translates into very hostile, rude and arrogant behaviour by customer service staff in response to any customer perceived to be demanding. Such customers are perceived as "beggars with choices", or "Oliver Twists", asking for more, instead of being appreciative of what is being done for them.

There are specific examples in each of these cases but I do not want to mention any names or persons, dates, companies or industries. Additionally, I have heard so many complaints from customers from all walks of life, that most people reading this article will not only readily agree but also add to the issues raised in this article.

Third, customer service in Ghana seems very disjointed. A simple service that could have been rendered by one person is divided into several irrelevant and small functions. One cannot tell whether this is meant to achieve better levels of efficiency through specialisation and division of labour or simply create employment for more people. The unfortunate consequence of this is that people build bottlenecks and entire empires with the little functions they play as part of an entire process, hijacking the entire process and in effect inconveniencing the customer beyond imagination.

Nobody else dare attempt to play the other's role even in the latter's absence. This is because it is perceived as an attempt to usurp the latter's authority or position. So the poor customer either has to wait the whole day for something very simple because the officer in charge has not reported to work yet, or is gone out and has locked up the stamps in his drawer.

Also related to the disjointed nature of customer service in Ghana is the fact that once roles or functions are assigned to specific people, they forever remain the only people capable of playing those roles. In their absence, those particular services cannot be rendered, sometimes leading to loss of revenue since the customer walks away to a competitor.

Furthermore, there are three major phrases synonymous with customer service in Ghana that drives customers to nuts. The first of these is, "Go and come", followed by " he is not in", and thirdly "I don't know". "Go and come" sometimes with "tomorrow" added to it, makes one wonder whether work is done within a time frame or any sense of urgency is attached to work in Ghana.

This is because one is told, "go and come tomorrow" so many times with such ease and absolutely no remorse. In fact, a great deal of surprise is expressed should the customer get angry after about the third or fourth time. Ask very simple questions to people sitting in the same offices for 15 years or more and you would be shocked to be told, "I don't know", with absolutely no sense of shame. Then there is the chronic problem of lateness. Punctuality seems not to be part of our genetic construction.

I had the "opportunity" of calling at the shop of a major service provider in this country on the Milo marathon Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago. The first staff to appear came at 10.45 a.m. to meet a front office packed with many customers waiting to be served. We later found out that her coming to the office was even coincidental since she was actually not on duty.

She passed by the office on her way to the Makola market for her weekend shopping. The first staff officially on duty arrived at 11.20 a.m., instead of 9 a.m. and absolutely no apologies were rendered to the customers who had been waiting for over two hours to be served.

While waiting to be served at the front office of this same service provider, another shortcoming of customer service in Ghana emerged -most customer service staff in Ghana are not bilingual. A French-speaking delegation on their way to Dakar entered the office to ask a very simple question. The commotion that ensued was indescribable!

In the end, it took the combined effort of three "tired of waiting" customers employing their entire French reserves in the archives of their memories to sort them out. Meanwhile 70 per cent of the countries surrounding us in the sub-region are French-speaking. How can we be the gateway to a sub-region whose language we do not speak a word of?

I have also personally witnessed on several occasions customers lining up in a queue for several hours waiting to be served. The customer service staff attach no sense of urgency to their work to ensure that the waiting time of the customer is shortened a bit to alleviate the inconvenience of waiting to be served.

In fact, they chat in between serving customers, while staff from other departments interrupt the service to the public with their personal requests or those of people they know in the queue who have solicited their help due to the lengthy waiting time. Customer satisfaction is entirely out of question!

I wonder how many firms have looked at effective queue management as a basis for differentiation and competitive advantage. This is because service delivery points in Ghana are plagued with very long and static queues resulting in a high level of customer dissatisfaction.

I have personally been in so many of these queues over the last seven years and the murmurs from customers clearly express disgust and disappointment at how long one has to wait to be served, which serves as a proxy for the quality of service being rendered in the customer’s perception. Differentiating the mode of service itself is an opportunity for reducing customer waiting time, improving customer service and consequently customer satisfaction.

That way firms also stand the chance of increasing their resale market because customers are happy to come back anytime, any day. It seems completely unknown to staff at the service end of organisations' value chain that customer service is a major source of differentiation for competitive advantage. Efforts at differentiation for competitive advantage have so far centred mainly on products.

Little attention has been given to opportunities for differentiation based on other strategic business units or aspects of the value chain such as service delivery where actual retail and sales occur, or better still where the actual quality of the service (or product) is communicated to the market which in effect directly determines the market positioning of these products and corporate image as a whole.

Customer service staff in Ghana need to be made aware that the customers they serve constitute the market share of the companies they work for, and that the quality of service they render directly has the potential to increase or diminish this market share and consequently the profitability of the company they work for, its survival and in the long run their job security. Put more simply, it is the customer's custom that ensures your job security!