Serve and You Shall be Served

One fine Wednesday afternoon, Mark and his wife Wendy entered a small coffee shop along the City Center wanting to get their afternoon Mocha Java. Waiters in the coffee shop had seen them entered the place but continued to ignore them inspite of the couple´s eye contact directed at them. They tried to signal a wave to attract their attention but still to no avail.

After fifteen minutes of finger tapping, still there was no waiter coming to attend to their orders. And they ended up sitting there like invisible souls anxious to get their afternoon fix. They could not wait anymore and stood up frantically and walked out of the coffee shop´s exit door fuming mad and vowed never to go to that coffee shop ever again.

Has this ever happened to you? I bet that you are nodding your head and mumbling a strong yes as you read this. It seems that finding a good and quality customer service is an arduous task these days. The probability of finding a quality service is comparable to a search for a real diamond in the pile of zirconium stones.

This is why we should not heed warnings of friends who openly do not give a good word about certain service companies as they were once malcontent and disgruntled clients. May it be in a bank, store, hotel, restaurant, travel agency office, hospital or even worse a government office ( what could be worse than that! ) you can not be sure of what kind of service you will go through as soon as you entered the front door. More often than not, you will wind up in a nerve wracking and upsetting encounter with an attending clerk who shows his incompetence and lack of knowledge no matter how much you muster practicing your lines to tell them what brought you to their place.

Service oriented companies or institutions may not be aware of the importance of customer service. Some may not know the full extent of the impact of poor customer service. A well served client will encourage them to go back and seek for their service which will eventually give a good recommendation to others about their company resulting to a triple increase of company revenue. An outstanding reputation is priceless and incomparable to the sales pitch conveyed to the public. This positive image of the company through offering quality service to costumers will flourish and stay as a pure investment that multiplies and earns interests in the long run by acquiring more clients in the end. But isn´t that what customer service is all about?

Companies that offer services should check their front liner clerks who directly deal with clients. A vibrant winsome personality with a charming smile equipped with impeccable communication skills and an ability to listen more (not to talk more than the client) after a "what can I do for you sir?" line would surely bring more business to the company. A friend Luther filed for a car loan this week in a prestigious bank. He painstakingly sorted all the papers required with his wife as a guarantor of

the car loan. Unfortunately, he got a discouraging phone call from the bank clerk saying that they can not process the car loan on the account that his wife is not a citizen of the country yet ( though her citizenship papers are already being processed.) No explanation no options were given to Luther but a simple I am sorry your car loan has been disapproved reply. To his chagrin, Luther found another bank where he tried filing his car loan again keeping his fingers crossed. Thankfully, a competent, approachable and professional bank clerk offered three options possible for him to have his loan approved. The smart bank clerk was appalled to know that the former bank did not offer any options to him at all. A day later, Luther got an overwhelming phone call from the bank announcing that his car loan has just been approved. Needless to say that Luther initially became a victim of a bank´s poor customer service trap.

Some companies would go to great lengths to give a client an excellent offer in order to preserve a good relationship with his client. However, some will not bother at all. The truth of the matter is that poor service practice in any company or institution does not start from the upper management level but with the lower level clerks who directly and initially deal with the clients . On Jenny´s Christmas travel plan to Thailand, she went to a travel agency to book her flight six months in advance to be able to get an aisle seat (her preferable spot) and hoping to be given a good deal. She was told by a travel agent that she had to pay the tickets two weeks after booking. "You mean at the beginning of the next month?" She asked ."Yes, that´s the airline policy" travel agent replied nonchalantly. Since she could not raise 1200 Euros that soon, following her instinct, she thought of giving it another try and dragged her feet back to the same travel agency a week after and talked to another travel agent.

Lo and behold, she was told that she had to pay two weeks before departure and not two weeks after booking the flight. Apparently, the former travel agent did not know what she was offering to poor Jenny (had she not tried to talk to another travel agent she would have pressured herself to come up with the exorbitant travel fare for a short period of time due to misinformation.) In this case, we see how shifting from an incompetent to a skillful agent in customer service makes a big difference isn´t it? (same travel agency but different travel agents.)

Whenever a client go to queue up for information or to seek for service we always get a jittery feeling making a client stutter, nail bite or worse lose his cool infront of an attending clerk. Experiencing an excellent quality service these days is akin to a hit or miss Russian Roullete´s game of chance. You will never know when one bullet will hit you or not.

In general, rule of thumb of customer service is to build a happy and satisfied customers which could make them seek your service twice or more. As Laurice Leittao puts it: Our greatest asset is the customer! Treat each customer as if they are the only one.!

For clients seeking for a quality service, if you happen to be involved in any kind of service in your line of work, follow one of the beatitudes of customer service, "Serve and you shall be served."