adminInteresting professional touch, I thought.
I was not sure if I should applaud the fact that someone was at least trying something to generate business or weep at the poor message it sent over about the quality of service you should expect.
I chose the more tearful option as by now it will have rained and the message will have been washed away and torn by the downpour that fell as I was writing this column.
Some ideas need to be taken a step further before they are implemented. Talking of quality, has anyone tried calling an automated helpline recently?
One of the major cellular networks has one answering system that drives me insane.
Now as a flow chart it probably looks great, prompts to whether I would like to be helped in Shona or English, etc.
There are four prompts before I get placed in a queue, then after about a minute of advertising I get told that everyone is busy and can I dial back later (which involves all the voice prompts again).
On a bad day it takes 30 minutes to get a human on the other end after numerous dials.
Now I am pretty sure that somewhere in the world there are some excellent studies done on the psychology of automated answer systems (if not there is a great thesis for someone), but whatever psychology this system is based on it leaves me in a rage.
I usually get vindictive thoughts of changing service providers. It is faster for me to drive to their offices and talk to a real person immediately than to do so over the phone.
I suppose I should be grateful that I am not being re-routed to a call centre in India.
We all make a living, to a degree, solving people’s personal crises. Now they may have not reached a massive emotional magnitude, but a crisis is simply when there is a difference between what a person wants (their expectation) and what they have now.
When someone walks into a supermarket the crisis is that they are hungry (or will be), have a limited budget, and want to walk out with groceries.
If this happens they are happy. If not and their expectations are not met, then the crisis escalates and with it the emotion attached to it.
Remember the expectation room in last week’s article?
Every time I enter your business I place you in a mental “expectation room”, failure to meet my expectation results in wholesale destruction and obliteration of the room (along with your reputation and chances of me doing business with you ever again).
Talking of ruined expectation, I spent an unhappy hour last week shopping for a new pair of longs.
I went to nearly every clothing shop at Borrowdale village (I avoided the ladies’ ones).
My crisis was this, I wanted a pair that fitted. While finding a waist size was easy, the leg lengths were all uniformly too long.
Now in other countries creating garments with different leg sizes has solved this dilemma, you can walk into a store and ask for a “30-inch waist with a short leg” and get it.
But no, not here, apparently all Zimbabweans should be tall and lanky with a one size fits all approach.
No one could even recommend a tailor for me to visit to get them altered.
I am throwing out a perfectly good business opportunity for someone to take up here (if you already stock different leg length longs do me a favour and email me so I can solve my little crisis forever).
Clothing store owners pay a little attention now, if you continue to blow up my expectations I am going to continue to buy clothes in whatever country I happen to be visiting where I can get sizes that fit me.
Your business suffers the loss of my custom, and the country suffers the loss of my money.
“Zach,” I hear you say, “isn’t that a little extreme?” Perhaps, perhaps not. The point of the trousers example is not just to get a better garment industry going, but to highlight the effects of poor quality delivery.
Perhaps I am a single whining, unfulfilled shopper, but when you take in some economies of scale and have, say, 100 000 people needing a new pair of longs a year at US$50 each that is a US$5 million turnover begging for someone’s attention.
Competition is real in Zimbabwe, both within and internationally.
That makes it a little rough for local industry.
It also means we have to up our game a bit (or a lot).
While a degree of protection probably should be afforded to local business (by duty on imports, tax rebates, etc), it should not be a first line of defence when simply improving quality of service will suffice.
Improving quality takes effort, maintaining it takes effort.
It takes effort to find out what people want, to plot out a strategy, and to deliver.
It takes formal and informal research to find out if your changes are translating into extra revenue and satisfaction, and perhaps a little more than asking me to rate a call at the end of a largely automated conversation.
On the bright side, Christmas shopping time is here and my rooms of expectation are filled with visions of helpful service that I can share with avid readers as I go from store to store searching for gifts for my friends and family.
I see helpful attendants beaming as they answer my queries, point out other options, up sell high profit items, and aim to make my experience a delight.
Store owners be warned the Zach shopping spree is about to begin.
Online Reporter