adminArthur Mutambara has said.
Speaking during the official opening of Zimbabwe’s inaugural Customer Services Week in Harare yesterday, DPM Mutambara said those industries that have greater interface with customers were increasingly becoming more important in the global economy.
“Businesses rooted in customer service are becoming more important in economic development.
“For instance, international consulting firm McKinsey Global Institute’s report on Africa projects an overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the continent of US$2,6 trillion of which US$1,3 trillion will come from these industries whose mantra is customer service.
“Therefore, effective customer service is also critical for the overall economic development of a country,” he said.
The event was organised by the Contact Centre Association of Zimbabwe.
Generally, African economies have been experiencing an improvement in the role of services as a portion of GDP, a development attributable to a steady growth in income per capita.
DPM Mutambara added that retail, banking, telecommunications and allied sectors were increasingly driving the country’s GDP growth, while sectors such as mining – although still critical – were expected to contribute half of the GDP.
The Deputy Prime Minister also urged companies to adopt more encompassing methods of measuring customer satisfaction, a factor he said should also be considered by the country’s economic planners.
“Measuring the quality of your customer service by customer satisfaction is not enough, to the extent that it may be a function of ignorance on the customers’ part because he/she may not be sure of what they want.
“There is need to adopt new methodologies that focus on customer success, that is, looking at their economics and their balance sheets.
“This is because a customer may be satisfied today and fail to buy your product tomorrow,” he said.
He questioned the logic of using measurement systems such as the GDP and per capita income to measure the health of an economy.
“For instance, it is largely believed that as a chief economic indicator, GDP has numerous flaws including the fact that it measures the amount of monetised commerce in a country, but counts remedial and
defensive expenditures (such as the costs of security, police, pollution clean-up among others) as positive contributions to commerce.
“Novel measurement concepts have been developed such as the assessment of Gross National Happiness (GNH), which is designed to measure quality of life or social progress in more holistic terms than the GDP,” said DPM Mutambara
He also took time to tour company stands at the event, urging them to adopt a broad-based view of effective customer service.
The main aim of National Customer Service Week is to enhance organisation’s commitment to customer service excellence.
National Customer Service Week is an extension of the International Customer Service Week, which was initiated by the International Customer Service Association in 1988.
The event has traditionally been celebrated within the first full week of October and has become a global week to celebrate and promote customer service excellence and to appreciate the role of customers in business growth and sustainability.
Online Reporter