Celebrate customer all year round

and Hospitality Industry Ministry, Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe are the key hosts of the National Customer Service Week and Service Excellence Awards.
According to a spokesperson for the organisers of the event, these awards are a celebration of excellence in customer service and appreciation of the role of customers in business growth and sustainability.
The position that the customer is taking in any organisation is increasingly becoming invaluable.
Companies are now moving away from product-driven strategies to those driven by customers.
It is noble that such an idea was mooted but the celebration of the customer need not just be relegated to one day each year but it should an ongoing process that all businesses must pursue.
The judging has also been enhanced this year as the committee comprises academics, researchers, captains of industry and an auditing firm will be in the panel that will verify the final submissions.
The awards category are diverse — they cover the hospitality, ICT and telecoms, banking and financial services, public sector, healthcare and pharmaceutical, transport, retail and fast foods, education, insurance and motor trade sectors.
Measuring customer service
Do businesses have ways of self-evaluating the success or failure of their customer care programs?
My appreciation is that if you are not measuring customer care, you are not practising “customer care”.
There are qualitative and quantitative ways of measuring customer care. One measure is on the customer engagement ratio.
In average organisations, it is believed that the ratio of fully engaged customers to actively disengaged customers is 0.8:1; meaning that most organisations have less than one fully engaged customer for every actively disengaged customer.
Conversely, in world-class organisations those that are at or above the Gallup’s 90th percentile — the engagement ratio is 8:1 — 10 times larger than the average organisation’s ratio.
One would then ask what steps are being taken to engage customers or is it the case that most customers are in the disengaged or fully disengaged range.
One study found that it costs six to seven times more to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one.
For instance, it might cost US$10 to keep Alpha Limited as the existing customer.
However, for one to gain a new customer Beta Limited you will need to spend more than US$65.
Surveys
Some organisations have gone as far as conducting surveys. One might want to consider a transactional survey, which is done immediately after the customer transaction has been made or a relationship survey for the repeat customers.
Considerations on the sample size, the type of sample must be made. It is important that the level of precision and the margin of error be set.
You must allow your customers to answer questions on a weighted scale, rate your experience on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 indicating complete dissatisfaction and 5 indicating complete satisfaction.
The financial services sector
My appreciation is that financial institutions must focus more on online banking and understand that it benefits the customer enormously.
The data that the customer provides should be scrutinised and studied sufficiently so as to really know the customer.
Segmentation should be undertaken with sufficient focus being made on each segment and the right communication within the segment.
The right marketing efforts should be made so that the adequate balance between customer focus and profitability is achieved.
It is estimated that between 10 to 15 percent of company revenues are retained as the direct result of our use of this specific customer information.
In a depressed economy, that 10 to 15 percent could mean that the entire profit could be won or lost as a result of information gathered.
Technology should always be incorporated in all business efforts to ensure the right implementation of a customer focused culture.
Holding onto traditional practices is something most banks should avoid as much as possible.
Always try to be specific about your sales some measure using revenue per product, revenue per customer; in the hospitality industry, they call it revenue per room.
These ratios are most useful when compared against other companies in the same industry. Ideally, a company wants the highest revenue per employee possible, as it denotes higher product-ivity.
While businesses should firstly see if they are not infringing on individual privacy, I believe that any business should gather as much data from their customers as they can possibly get.
This personalised and high-touch use of the data ensures that the customer ia constantly engaged. It will sometimes lead to making an excellent economic decision.
Quote of the week
It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. — Henry Ford.
May God richly bless you!!