April 2016

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on April 5th 2016 Lucy Kiruthu There is an old idiom that goes “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” It has a simple meaning that once we have been fooled or tricked we need to be wary of it happening again. Like many that have been fooled on April 1st in past years, I was very wary on Friday and for sure I do not get fooled this year. In the business circles, I suspect that the people who get fooled the most are customers. As customers, we get fooled by websites, by advertisement, we get fooled by sales people and we even get fooled at the point of sale or service. Do we get fooled only once or do we get fooled twice, thrice and even four times?  Why do we accept to be fooled the second, third and fourth time? Are…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on March 29th 2016 Lucy Kiruthu Fast Food eateries have evolved. The days of Munyiri’s fish and chips are long gone. In case you have no idea about Munyiri’s please get insights from those who went to college in Nairobi in the 90’s and possibly in the 80’s. My best memory was when the Egerton University bus parked right outside Munyiri’s. I do not remember much about the customer experience or the fish but the chicken was well loaded with calories for our trip back to Njoro and it was tasty. By the time I got my first salary there was a certain Steers on Tom Mboya Street that I really liked. It seemed clean and organized and the Ice-cream and the chicken was like nothing I had tasted before. Before Steers hit the market there was off course Wimpy with the one at corner house being a favourite…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on March 22nd 2016 Lucy Kiruthu Customers hate to wait.  They hate to wait for phones to be picked up, for emails to be responded to or for assistance to be received at a service point. Many grow impatient, they become edgy, and they start showing signs of disgruntlement. I have disconnected calls after waiting too long for next available representative even after being assured that my call was important to the organization. Many have driven off from petrol stations after waiting too long for staff to conclude an animated conversation. Others have walked out from one restaurant to the next after waiting too long for a waiter to recognize their presence.  To a bank customer, 5 minutes waiting on a queue that is moving slowly because the tellers are few or are slow feels like 10 minutes. It is for this reason that Smart Companies need to continuously…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on March 15th 2016 Lucy Kiruthu What brand is your customer experience? Not many of the chief executive officers in Kenya’s service organizations would give a straight answer to this question. One such CEO’s responded to the question with a question. He sought to know what I really meant by that. What I mean is “How would you describe your company’s customer experience?”  Is the customer experience on-brand or is it off-brand? Organization across the globe spend billions of dollars developing brands. These brands mainly at the corporate level or at the product level such as I-phone take time to build. The five most powerful brands in the world namely Apple, Microsoft, Google, Coca-Cola and IBM as per Forbes 2015 ranking need not much introduction. In fact a quick glance at the top 100 most valued brands according to Forbes yields more than 90% brand recognition. The key question…