AUNT'S CORNER

Dear Aunt Silvia, I am a young professional lady and I own a company. I was very shocked a week ago when I went to pick my payments from a well known international company, and the lady in charge of payments was very uncooperative. She openly told me that I had no right to burge in her office to demand for my payments at eleven in the morning! She told me that their suppliers pick their payments in the afternoon, something I was not aware of. Please, tell me if it is right to be treated this way, where is customer service in this country?Edith Dear Edith, Customer care has been mentioned not once but many times as very poor in this dear country. That’s why there is even a national campaign driven at rectifying this malaise. There is nothing as bad as walking into an office and the first thing you meet is a hostile person. What these young women (and why is it that ladies are the most hostile animals on planet?) don’t know is that, they are the face of the company – and when a person walks into a company meeting smiling faces, they become very comfortable and judge the company in a positive way because of the way they were received, hence more business for the company. It has happened to me and almost anyone else who has ever gone to seek for services in one company or the other, am bold enough to put these young ladies where they belong when they behave badly, but then how many people are able to do what I do? What surprises me the most is that some companies are aware that the people who have been put on the front desk- have no personality and are therefore not suitable for the jobs, but they do nothing about it, and then you wonder what the core values of these companies are. Edith, I have had the bitter taste of something similar to what you are undergoing. I truly bleed for you. How people are treated is not proper when it comes to business ethics and customer service delivery. I know a lot of effort is being put in place to train people about customer care/service, but really do we need to take people to be trained on how to smile and be courteous? I don’t think so. Companies, organizations and even government parastatals should include good customer service delivery as one of their core values. Some companies lose business, in terms of losing clients to their competitors, not because they cannot deliver the services, but because of poor customer care that clients receive at the front desk or from any other employee in the company. How you handle your clients before the service is what counts at the end of the day, because that is what will determine whether the client will come back or not. What I can advise is that next time you are treated rudely keep your cool, when you next return, seek for an appointment with the company’s boss like it’s another business altogether and mention this to the culprit’s boss. Hopefully that should lead to some corrective action from her superiors. Also, ensure that your clients don’t also suffer the same at your company. kayitesius@yahoo.com