Unveiling the Hidden Impact:

Many organizations include an expense budget for their marketing activities every year to acquire prospective customers as leads for conversion to loyal customers.

Research has shown that it is cheaper to retain existing customers than acquiring new ones.

However, there are times when new customers on their own volition perform online searches for providers of certain products or services they need urgently.

Having identified potential suppliers of their product or service needs, they reach out via the contact details provided on the websites to discuss their needs.

Unfortunately, there are times when companies are unable to respond or provide a timely response to such prospective customer enquiries and thus lose business that would not cost them anything additional to find.

There are cases where one is already a customer of a company and wants to receive a service and the experience is very unpleasant.

Real Case Studies - My Personal Experience

In the last few months months, I have had cause to contact companies to give new business and also reached out for solution to companies with which I already have an existing relationship and my experience with their customer support was very unsatisfactory and I will share my experiences here.

Case Study 1

I checked online to see potential manufacturers and suppliers of large quantities of Aluminum Ingots for my buyer I do business with. I came across a number of companies and settled for two I considered had capacity to deliver the large volume required.

The first company provided contact of their marketing teams in each region of the world including names, emails and phone numbers so I reached out via email to the relevant team in one of the regions closest to the buyer’s location.

Now, because the request was urgent, I also sent WhatsApp messages to the same people because their email filter rejected my email. Unfortunately, there was no response from one of them who saw my first and a follow up message. A second person did not respond until about a week later.

Immediately I received his WhatsApp response, I sent him a reply and this is several weeks later without any response from him even as of the time of this post.

Case Study 2

I also reached out to a second company via the email I saw on their website and there was no acknowledge or response to my enquiry.

Case Study 3

I wanted to do a sim swap with my mobile telephone service provider so I visited one of their service centers. The sim swap was done and I was told I should be able to use the line in three hours’ time.

I tried the using the number after three hours but it was only the data for internet access that was working while the voice call option was non functional.

I went two days later to the same customer experience center and met the same officer who attended to me previously. I explained to her that I received a text message from them that stated that my sim swap registration was rejected because my National ID Number (NIN) provided was not the one used in the initial registration of the mobile line.

Again, the lady initiated the process afresh and informed me to try after three hours. Behold, it was the same situation and that line is still not working.

Each time I visit their office, it is either their system is down or I meet a large crowd on queue outside their office so I have still been unable to resolve the issue after almost 2 weeks.

Case Study 4

All of sudden, I was unable to initiate transfers from my banking mobile app or use my ATM debit card to make payments for items I procured. I did not suspect anything was the matter since sometimes a faulty network creates this problem.

It was when I initiated a funds transfer using Internet Banking that I received a notification that my account had been placed on a restriction.

This was shocking to me since I did not receive a text message or email or phone call from the Bank explaining what transpired.

The next day I visited the nearest branch of my bank to find out what transpired. I had to queue for almost 30 minutes before meeting the officer who checked my account and told me there was a debit restriction on that particular account and she would reach out to the Unit in their Head Office that placed it to know what happened.

She told me to go wait in a corner so she could attend to other customers whilst awaiting a response to her email.

It was after another 20 minutes I went back to her and she said I should reach my account officer to provide certain documents. In all this, she never told me what the problem was.

I then called my account officer whose mobile number was switched off. I sent him a text and then an email but I still did not receive any response from him, which was unusual because I had once sent him an email and he had responded promptly.

The next day, I called again but my account officer’s mobile was still unreachable so I made a call to the bank’s customer support service and whilst discussing with them, the line cut off and the lady never returned a call to me.

I made a second call and a different customer support officer picked and again whilst discussing with him as he said he was checking my account, the line cut off and he also did not return my call.

I initiated a chat via WhatsApp and the customer support agent was not helpful and stated that it was beyond her so she would sent it to the Head Office unit in charge for resolution.

That same night, I used the Bank’s escalation form to report the matter and when I submitted it I was informed via a response notification that it would be resolved within 24 hours, which of course never happened.

Two days later, I checked my account to see if I could reach one more person before sending an official email to their Managing Director. It was then I saw a place to switch to another account officer and provide a reason for the switch, which I promptly did and I was able to contact the new account officer.

As expected, she apologised whilst stating that my account officer was on vacation and had placed an out of office email message, which of course was untrue because I never received any such message.

Having checked my account, the officer then told me the reason my account was placed on a debit restriction was because I engaged in Cryptocurrency transactions and when I asked why nobody notified me, she only apologised and said she would reach out to the Unit in charge to find out the next steps.

I expressed my disapproval of their attitude and asked when I would receive a response from her, to which she said when she received a response from the Unit in charge.

I had to follow up with her and she sent me a form to fill so I could acknowledge I would not engage in Cryptocurrency transactions again before the restriction would be removed.

When I checked my account for the period under review, there was no cryptocurrency transaction inflow into my account but just tithes I paid to my local Church from my account based on Cryptocurrency inflows I received into my Binance account.

The money is still in my Binance account but my local bank restricted my account without a proper review of the narration of the transaction in my account.

I then responded to them that I would not fill the form for the under listed reasons:

(1)There was no cryptocurrency transaction inflow into my account.

(2)There was no signed law by the President in the country prohibiting the use of cryptocurrency so their act was illegal because they relied on some circular sent by the Central Bank to all banks banning the use of Cryptocurrencies.

(3)The Federal Government recently approved a Blockchain policy on May 23, 2023, a prove that they are in support of Cryptocurrencies.

I asked them to immediately remove the illegal restriction on my account because there was even no court order backing their action neither was any crime committed.

It was when I wrote to the Head of the Bank’s Compliance Group that they immediately removed the restriction because they understood the implication of their action.

They had inconvenienced me for more than two weeks with their illegal restriction of my account but I decided not to pursue any legal action against the Bank.

Common Factors in all these Case Studies

In all these cases, the common factors are sloppy staff attitude, poor customer service and a knowledge gap of the solution to the customer’s need.

Many companies do not pay attention to this area of their operations and therefore lose prospective customers while also frustrating the existing ones with huge business loss implication.

So what could be done to address these often overlooked areas of an organization’s operation to enable them deliver exceptional service?

Proffered Solution

1.Clearly, training is required to address this problem because staff must be made to understand that exceptional service to customers will enable the organization to remain in business to pay the bills including their remuneration.

They must understand the need for diligence and attention to details in providing feedback to customers both existing and new.

2.Process Automation is required if a company is lean on resources to hire enough personnel to support their operations and provide service to clients. For instance, the contact email provided on their official website should be programmed to escalate to supervisors when the responsible officer has not reverted in line with the organization’s established Service Level Agreement (SLA) response time stated in their Customer Service Policy.

3.Mystery shoppers should be used to test the company’s service to measure against set standards. A mystery shopper, also known as a secret shopper, is an individual who is hired by companies to evaluate the quality of service and customer experience provided by their employees. Mystery shoppers pose as regular customers and visit stores, restaurants, hotels, or other establishments to assess various aspects such as customer service, cleanliness, product knowledge, and adherence to company standards. 

4.Mystery shoppers should also be engaged to test all the aspects of the company’s online response system because we have identified the human factor as a major obstacle to exceptional customer experience and business growth. All issues identified must be promptly resolved - poor work attitude, work overload, knowledge gaps, etc.

When this has been done, a company should not make it a one off exercise but implement a framework for regular testing of these aspects of their operations to ensure seamless and pleasant customer experience, which would in turn ensure customer retention and business growth.

Conclusion

Companies need to pay attention to the often overlooked aspects of their business as it affects customer service experience.

They must put in place a robust framework for testing their customer support operations to make sure their systems are working, staff are monitored to have a work life balance for effective service, regularly trained and reminded of the need to view customers in the right perspective as the main stay of their business.

They must have a customer service policy in place with SLAs on timely response and ensure continuous testing of the benchmarks and infrastructure put in place for effective customer service experience and assured business growth.

Gabriel Ama