Welcome to a whole new standard of experience on Customer Care.
This special section - Customer Care with Education Times - dedicated for customer care, aspires to redefine and revolutionize the standards we have both traditionally and conventionally followed and / or have been challenged by, over time.
Deepanie Perera
MBA (Sri J), DPHRM (UK), CPE (Cambridge, UK)
Business Consultant, HR Specialist and a Trainer and Lecturer
deeps.perera@yahoo.com |
Let us reflect on some common day to day experiences.
Buying groceries at the supermarket or the kade on top of your lane
Buying food
Buying a service - transportation, water, electricity, local council services, doctor's services etc.
Buying medicines
Buying knowledge - education, training and development, books, etc.
In this context, is the customer KING / QUEEN or pauper, pain-in-the-neck or waste of time?
Let's face it. We are a backward nation, in that I believe we are still in the stone age in terms of 'customer care' and the standards we ought to achieve. Don't our sellers and marketers take the customer for granted, compromise on customer care, insult and often treat customers 'carelessly'? Isn't callousness, arrogance, rudeness, etc. commonplace? I am in no way trying to generalize here.
There are a few, a very few, I mean not even a handful of those in the space of 'business' who get this all important 'caring' aspect right. They thrive. The stakes and returns are high.
But we know what a good majority of us go through, in our day to day engagements and transactions that we may also tag as 'exchange of value' when we pay for a product or a service. How often do we end up disgruntled? How often do products and services we purchase let us down? What about those situations, where we end up agonized, broken and helpless, perhaps?
So what really are the dimensions of caring? And why is it that caring becomes so important in our brutally competitive and turbulent world of business? The Oxford English dictionary definition of 'Care' includes: serious attention to avoid damage, risk or error, feel concern or interest, like to have or willing to do and/or look after.
Caring, responsibility, compliance and effectiveness are intertwined, or are integrated values that form solid foundations of commercial transactions. They trigger from the very first customer-seller or customer-marketer touch-point, stretching beyond just a simple sale. Caring involves the total experience of a product / service underpinned by trust, durability, and return of the desired value for money in the centre as core cornerstones which constitute business transactions.
What of those transactions that carry no commercial exchange of value, but are of a service orientation? The same rules of caring apply. Customer Care is an endless state.
It is about lasting customer relationships, it is about customer centricity and it is about going beyond your call of duty. Customer Care is a journey, and the journey continues…
We invite you to join this journey, with your experiences that may belong to the good and the bad.
Become an integral part in our national effort to redefine, continuously and consistently improve the standards of Customer Care with Education Times. |
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