“I was reflecting the other day on the near infinite number of ways in which companies annoy their customers. A few that make me go “grrrrrr:”
– Being forced to rifle through a two-foot pile of garments in order to find my size
– Having to search through lines of nano-sized text at the bottom of an unsolicited email offer to find the “unsubscribe” button
– Getting handed a hotel key but not being told where to find the elevators
– Having to dig out the manual to reset the clock in your car
– Watching flight attendants gab in the front of the cabin oblivious to a blinking call button.”
Gary Hamel, WSJ.com (28 April 2010)
Management author Gary Hamel was an angry man in his Wall Street Journal blog recently. He spelled out the many ways in which companies, far from delighting customers, actually set out to ANNOY them. I have reproduced some of his main examples in the excerpt shown.
Now this really is a mystery: why would any rational, self-protecting company want to do this? Irritate, irk, vex and rankle its most valued customers? Beats me too. Hamel admits there are companies like Apple and Virgin that regularly exceed his expectations. But most, he posits, “test the outer limits of my patience and equanimity.”
Here are some local examples of ridiculous things we do to customers in Kenya:
- Force customers to queue out of the door in our banks and supermarkets served by the two tellers on duty, while six counters remain unopened.
- Employ shop assistants who have not the faintest, vaguest clue about the merchandise they sell.
- Wilfully and knowingly serve bad food in restaurants.
- Place uninterested and ill-motivated staff in front of customers.
- Only tell passengers their flight is delayed by several hours once they have already checked in.
- Allow our staff to steal from customers when they aren’t looking.
Three questions: Why, why, why? This is plain ridiculous, yet it is a daily event. Two mental attitudes drive this kind of seemingly irrational behaviour. One, that my customers don’t really deserve any better – they are pumbavus. Second, that they won’t really go anywhere whatever I do, because either I don’t have any real competitors, or the competitors are worse than I am.
Now, if your company collectively has the first attitude, it deserves immediate bankruptcy. You are not in business to wring money out of customers and fill your pockets; you are in business to serve and honour and uplift them, and in the process make money for yourself. The despising of customers as unwashed imbeciles who come to make trouble on your premises is all too common. If allowed to, I would personally lead a special force to whip such companies out of existence.
The second attitude – what options do they have – is hardly any better. It is actually moronic. If you are in the privileged position of enjoying some sort of monopoly, what you should be doing is building strong bonds of loyalty with your customers: serving them well and putting their interests first. That way, when the monopoly ends (as they always do) you will be in a strong position to retain your customers.
Most businesses do the reverse in Kenya. They take monopoly status as a license to abuse. That’s why we have so many former monopolies that are now extinct or have undergone near-death experiences in their history: Uchumi, East African Industries, Pan Paper, Kenya Airways, Africa Online, African Tours & Hotels, Kenya Posts & Telecommunications. It’s a long list, and you can make it longer. And I fear time will make it longer still.
If you are a business thinker, think about this. Which one of your many stakeholders – shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, government, bankers, others – brings the most money INTO the ecosystem, rather than takes it out? Easy, isn’t it?
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Looks like I’m the last to discover your website tsk. The best and worst part of your article is that its just a hint of the madness that is Kenyan businesses and their practices. You got me thinking with your list of local examples, What if Organizations treated their employees like customers, would things be different?
I’ve read articles and books on how you should treat your customers. Not to say there are non on how to treat your employees but they don’t have the same passion. Maybe its because being an employee is like being a coat while being a customer is like being the actual skin. Its part of us.
Thing is, employees are the face of every organization. They literally personify the organization, yet many barely pay well, have no benefits and treat their human resources the way matatu drivers treat their cars. I usually stay away from the what if game since its dangerous but, I’m an idealist, so I’ll make the plunge in this case.
What if the problem isn’t in the way organizations treat their customers? What if the problem with barely existent quality customer service is with the way organizations treat their employees?
Look at it this way, the reason we never curse out our parents (other than the fear that God will strike me deaf, dumb and blind if I do) is that they have our back. They take care of us, look out for our best interests. If organizations put their employees first, then employees would definitely put the organization first and in so doing its customers.
Thoughts?
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Pate:
Welcome aboard. You are absolutely right, and I say this in pretty much every management talk I give: unhappy employees can never make customers happy. Owners and managers have two failings: failing to understand the preeminence of the customer in business; and failing to understand how to inspire and motivate employees to look after customers.
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The new website is bright!
One comment from Kenyan employees that I may never understand is “Customer anaongea vibaya”. Anyone who is not as baffled as I am by that complaint, please explain what is supposedly acceptable for customers to do when unhappy with poor service – arrive with a band of cheerleaders?
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Reserve the best parkings on the premises for the “mkubwa” (of the company) and leave the customers with the furthest parkings or worse still with no parking at all.
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KW:
Yes – the wadosi must be comfortable, the customer can walk…it’s just astonishing.
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Absolutely concur with your thoughts. Poor service especially capped with an appalling attitude towards a customer is always incomprehensible, “customer, siku ingine enda somewhere else”, how now do you tell a customer that? True, those riding on monopoly, a day is coming…
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Mr. Bindra, this is brilliant, love your Sunday articles! Your book subject area and latest Sunday articles touch a badly wired nerve in business practice. Can we make suggestions as well? Please, when you talk to employers make them realise HUMANS are the most important resource in their business. That’s why its called HUMAN resource and not GOODS resource or PROFIT resource. When employees are demotivated, disgruntled or monitored and dictated to like caged animals customers are the first to feel that pressure. Case in point, what’s happening at Chandarana – employees are policed like robbers, clients are followed by shadowy figures, the store (especially yaya) has a fixed pungent smell near any of the freezers, rat droppings can be found beneath any food shelf, expired dusty goods are still on the shelf – generally service has seriously deteriorated and yes, customers are leaving in droves. You are right, in this day of social networks businesses need to be careful, the story of Chandarana is already making rounds on facebook. I’ve seen shows (TV) where CEOs have gone undercover and worked in their stores/branch offices and come out are dismayed by the practices they find. This usually results to a tsunami of change – Kenyan business owners (if they can humble themselves enough to work in the store carrying produce) need to think of similar strategies, they need to figure out how to get to the bottom of the decay within their systems/structures that stops them from realising their full potential. Interestingly, most of these problems are so easily fixable!
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