September 2016

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on Sept 14th 2016 Often times when facilitating customer service training sessions, I pose this question - Who has the Best Service in Kenya? The answers are often as varied as the number of participants in the room. Often times we fail to reach a consensus on who really has the best service in Kenya. However, there are companies that are frequently top of the mind. In the just released Institute of Customer Service (ICS) Kenya Service Excellence Survey Report, a number of companies made it to the top of the list. It was interesting to note that most companies that participants suggest during the training sessions showed up on the ICS-Kenya survey report. The survey report released on Thursday last week had targeted any Kenyan customer as a potential respondent. The only major requirement was for a customer to have access to a mobile phone. Customers responded via…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on Sept 7th 2016   As customers, we have expectations. One of our key expectations is that we will be kept informed. An informed customer is without doubt a happy customer. As customers, we get informed through various channels. Sometimes we get a call, an SMS, an email, a letter or we come across a notice in the papers or an advert on television or even a post on social media. For example when a 10% excise duty on bank charges was introduced, I received several notifications. Occasionally I also get an SMS from my bank indicating that I qualify to borrow. Unfortunately, the SMS notification does not indicate the interest rate or other fees applicable. In addition, when I enrolled for mobile banking, I did not receive a notification on what the charges would be. This made me wonder why banks are selective in sharing information with customers.…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on August 23rd 2016 Is a friendly greeting and a lovely smile all that is needed to retain a customer? Off course not! Customer service goes beyond a greeting and a smile. If a waiter is all smiles and the table is dirty, the order takes an hour and the food is pathetic it is unlikely that as customers we will go back. If a staff welcomes us with a warm greeting but keeps us waiting with no updates the warm greeting will have added little value if any. If a bank teller has a lovely smile but does not keenly listen to our request then the smile may be considered as insincere. For many years, customer service has been equated to a frontline staff responsibility. Undeniably, frontline staff manage the bulk of customer interactions. In many organizations, these staff are single-handedly tasked with making customers happy and dealing…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on August 16th 2016 All organizations learn whether intentionally or accidentally. Continuous intentional learning is strategically important to the success of all kinds of businesses. This is mainly because we live in a dynamic environment where change is constant.  There are changes happening all around us, businesses therefore need to learn the new and unlearn the old to keep up with these changes. Learning has been linked directly to organizational performance.  Some business leaders and owners know this too well but many others are unaware of the need for continuous learning while others only learn accidentally from their own mistakes. The organizations that stay ahead are those that intentionally learn and learn from the successes and mistakes of others. Peter Senge author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization says, “the only sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on August 9th 2016 Last week in this column, we talked about the email overload that many people are facing today. This is not reason enough to not respond to our customers’ emails in a professional and timely manner. One of the best emails I have ever received as a customer was an exit email sent to me by audible.com an amazon.com company. I had by mistake signed up for Audible Listener membership. My call to cancel the membership was immediately followed by a personalized email from the representative that I had spoken to.  The email read in part, “Hi Lucy, Thank you for contacting Audible, my name is Leo, your Audible specialist. I'm glad that I was able to help you today”. Leo further alerted me that a refund would appear in my account within 7-10 days but to my surprise, the refund reflected in the account within…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on August 2nd 2016 The year 1999 is when I created my first email account. The yahoo.com account was entirely meant for communicating with my sister who had relocated to the USA. At that time, the use of the internet was spreading fast and in the early 2000s Cyber Café were starting to flourish in Nairobi.  Companies as well were introducing email address mainly with the wananchi.com and kenyaweb.com domain names.  At my first job at Brookside, we had only one email address but I do not recall if any of our customers were indeed using it but I am certain that every email was getting a response.  There was no email overload then. Today, we live in different times. Almost every person with access to the internet has an email address with most people having several email addresses. The internet landscape has significantly changed. Laptop computers, tablets, phones,…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on July26th 2016 While heading Customer Service at the local office of an international security services provider, we ran a campaign themed “our customers pay our salaries”.  When we launched the campaign, the theme required no explanation. It was simple and clear. Almost ten years later, this simple message seems not to make sense to all employees. Customer service remains a challenge in many organizations. What are we not doing right? As I have interacted with many organizations, I have identified glaring gaps in the customer service agenda.  These gaps are multifaceted and a major one is on the people aspect. Starting all the way from recruitment, some organizations do not give adequate thought to the quality of people they hire. Small businesses especially are struggling in this area. Every business leader and owner must ask himself a number of questions before hiring a new staff. Does this person…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on July 19th 2016 A few days ago, I read an article in the huffingtonpost.com which highlighted that the cost of bad customer service is in excess of $80 billion per year in the USA and over $300 billion worldwide. As I thought over these numbers, I wondered what proportion of the $300 billion was Kenya’s.  How much are business losing in Kenya because of poor customer service? Is it Ksh 1 billion a 0.001% of the world or is it more, or could it at its best be a negligible amount? Has anyone ever computed these costs in Kenya? Does anyone at least care to compute the cost of poor customer service in his or her organization? I believe that the cost of poor customer service is much more than any senior executive and business owner might think.  Many elements can go into these costs. They include the…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on July 12th 2016 We often say that babies do not come with instruction manuals yet mothers (and some fathers) in their wisdom are able to figure out what to do when. If we are able to take care of babies with minimal or no instructions, do we really need instructions for use of the products we buy? Do these instructions really make a difference to the customers? I bought some uji (porridge) flour a while back. On the instruction for use it read “used like any other uji floor”. This perplexed me, I wondered if the company is just too lazy to give instructions or they think instructions do not matter.  On the other hand, I was quite impressed a few days ago when a hawker selling pawpaws gave this instruction to me “Ukifika nyumbani toa kwa karatasi ili siive mojamoja” meaning “once home remove the pawpaws from…

As it appeared in the Daily Nation on July5th 2016 How would you describe the state of customer service in Kenya? Is it getting better or is it getting worse? Are customer today happier than they were a decade ago? Are companies more focused on their customers than they were 5 years ago? Are staff keener on making the customer experience a little better? Are leaders fully committed to excellence in customer service or are they still paying lip service? Is the financial impact of customer service excellence evident on the top line and bottom line? These questions often go through my mind. Though I am confident that our customer service levels are not where they were in the 90s, I am cognizant of the fact that much more still remains to be done. Notable efforts have gone into improving the customer experience. In the last 2 decades, thousands of staff have been trained on basic…