Our basic expectations
Welcome dear readers to the Service Advocate column. This column aims to highlight problems faced by customers and also to promote awareness on the various facets of the service industry. The service industry is a diverse industry and incorporates many businesses that provide any type of service. The column’s focus is to discuss issues that affect us as customers and the hope that we as customers can effect change. Our first article discusses customer service.
As a customer, have you ever entered a store and felt like you were disturbing sales persons from their idle chit-chat on the phone or sales persons catching up on the latest episode of the Young and the Restless? Were they happy to see you? Or were they more annoyed that you disturbed them by coming into the store? This seems to be the common reaction you get upon entering any business entity.  As customers, what should we expect when we go to a shop? A store? Supermarket? Boutique? Doctor’s office? To pay bills?  Do we expect to be greeted with a smile? Should we expect friendly sales attendants who are willing to assist us? Or should we expect a rude sales person who does not acknowledge us as we come in? Or a store attendant who ignored us when we needed assistance?
When we enter any business establishment, what are our basic expectations? Should it be a warm, welcoming, friendly sales person who greets us and  gives us the genuine feeling that they are  happy to see us and to assist? This should be the common practice anywhere we go. We should always be greeted by a warm and welcoming smile and persons who are willing to assist us. As customers, we should not be discriminated against because of the way we are dressed or how we talk. Businesses need to anticipate customers’ needs and make the shopping experience an enjoyable one for their customers. Customers who enjoy the shopping experience at any business are always satisfied and will inevitably return. These very simple but powerful gestures  are a subset of one of the most basic but very important tools known as  customer service.
What is customer service? Customer service means different things to different people. It is difficult to find one definition of customer service that sums up what it means; hence we use various definitions to fit the purpose which meets our needs. One of the basic definitions is that customer service should exceed the expectations of the customers while meeting their needs. It can also mean going beyond what is expected or doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. As customers, can we identify the businesses which we visit and receive good or excellent customer service? What businesses should we expect customer service from? Is it hotels? Or is it restaurants? Maybe the banking industry? Or the stores on Regent Street? What about public service offices? The answer to these questions is very simple: any business we interact with, whether we visit an office or speak to a representative over the phone, we should expect good customer service.
Good customer service should not be practised sometimes or once in a while; it should become second nature. We should always expect it wherever we go. There is no excuse for offering poor customer service – even if that representative is having a bad day. The customer is not interested in whether the sales representative is in a good mood or not. Customers are there because they have a need and they want that need satisfied. Sales representatives are ambassadors of the company they work with, hence the way they treat customers will reflect whether or not that company values its customers. Thus, if we receive poor customer service from any business, we feel that the company does not appreciate or value our business. If we as customers perceive that  a company does not appreciate our business, then we will want to take our business to another company, where we will feel as if we are valued customers. Once a customer enters any business, that business should try its best to ensure it can sell its products to that customer; a customer lost is revenue lost for the business. Customers are very valuable, they may not always be right, but they have choices.
Providing good customer service does not mean that customers can treat sales representatives any way they like or speak abusively to them. Servitude is not service. Many persons confuse these two concepts and think that they have the right to speak to anyone in whatever manner they see fit.  Customers are paying for service, not for the opportunity to misbehave or ill treat business representatives. We should always remind ourselves of the golden rule, a very old rule but one that’s always applicable, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. A company or business might have provided a very poor service, but that does not mean that we have to be very abusive to the frontline staff. They are people like ourselves and they have emotions and feelings as well.
In the world of growing competition, customer service is becoming an integral part of any business. It plays a major role in the business success and many businesses are focusing on customer service training because businesses need to find a competitive edge, they need to find ways in which they can outsell their competitors.
We are all customers. Businesses are there to provide services or cater to our needs; we are the main reason that they are in existence; and so why should we accept anything less than excellent customer service?