adminBen Chiganze A Bassfisherman’s Approach
OVER the past few weeks, I have written about “loving yourself first as a critical step in enabling you to extend love to your neighbour”.
In this instalment, I am focusing on attitudinal challenges which affect many service providers. One of the key things one of my late uncles talked about was “munhu wese muranda kune umwe munhu, asi kuti ufarire uranda uyu unofanira kufarira umambo hwako (each person is a slave to another person but for them to subject themselves to that person they should be happy about that person’s personality).
The customer is king and the service provider is always the servant.
The servant who feels it is an honour to service his master enjoys the servant-master relationship. The servant who loves her/his master relationship feels it’s emotionally fulfilling and satisfying to please his or her master.
These two laws of love your neighbour as yourself and customer is king are the only known unshakable pillars of business survival.
These two laws jointly guide the value system of any 21st century company whose major tenets are love and respect.
However, these customer care laws are sometimes tempered with for short-term benefits but the results are always there for everyone to see.
The “King” will punish and banish the servant from his Kingdom. There are various suggestions as to why service providers temper with this known economic order and social stratification.
Social stratification
As we grow up there are people who we live up to and are inspired to a great extent by their existence.
These people drive our adrenalin up and pump us forward.
We always yearn to be where they are and aspire to associate with those who pump our adrenalin.
Sometimes businessmen or business women put everything aside to be where their inspirers are not where their customers are.
This diverts your value system from the customer focus to what is known as “class affiliation” and a deep sense of belonging to a group in town.
This is further reinforced by overemphasis on theories such as “eagles fly with eagles”.
True to some extent, but eagles that concentrate on flying with eagles but pay very little attention to the source of its food risk dying of starvation.
One of the major impediments to customer care is the over emphasis we put on what is referred to as people of “our class”.
Class denotes connotations of upper middle class of the society. It’s good to belong to a class but always remember to exceed your customers’ expectations while belonging to your “class”.
Educational levels
Another segregator factor is the level of education. One of my late friends used to lament how his colleagues at Shumba Golf Club segregated him because he did not possess a first degree though he had a Diploma in Marketing Management from South Africa. What does a degree have to do with playing golf?
Similarly, some service providers segregate customers along educational lines. People with a certain type of education are served better than others. The less educated are treated as “servants not kings”.
Smart people mentality
There are always customers who don’t look as smart as the service providers.
Whether it is subconscious or intentional, some service providers shun dirtier looking customers.
Resultantly customers who look as clean as their service providers get preference.
Racial lines
This is quite a common practice in hotels as waiters target certain races or people at the expense of the people who would have arrived earlier.
The people who are normally favoured are deemed to be people who have capacity to dish out tips.
However, these waiters at times miss out on the potential big tips from first time visitors.
Ultimately the hotel also loses its reputation as well if the management fails to detect the anomaly.
Religion
One of the major divisive elements in our society today is the religion. People have been divided along religious lines.
Apostolic sects like to deal with their own kind, Muslims only Muslims, Pentecostals only Pentecostals and Protestants only want to serve
Protestants.
When are we going to mature and understand that business is business whether it comes from people whose spiritual and value system you do not share?
One cutting edge about Asian traders is that all of us regardless of our backgrounds are their “friends”.
In other words, all of us are their neighbours. They appear to have an all embracing customers across all political, religious and economic divide as one single bloc of customers.
Most of the people fail to deliver good customer care because we tend to treat people in silos.
Resultantly the service providers tend to be servants of a specific small group of customers and insubordinate to the most important and bigger customer segments.
Customers are so precious to us, let’s respect them.
The writer is a managing consultant at CLC Training International. E-mail [email protected]
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