Service matters most!

By Ron Kaufman

As we adjust to difficult economic times, some businesses cut costs by cutting corners on customer service. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. Right now, service matters more than ever. Here's why:

1. When people buy during an economic downturn they are extremely conscious of the "hard earned" money that they spend. Customers want more attention, appreciation and recognition for their purchases, not less.

2. Customers want to be sure they get maximum value for the money they choose to spend. They want assistance, education, training, installation, modifications and support. The basic product may remain the same, but they want more service.

3. Customers want stronger guarantees that their purchase was "the right thing to do". In good times, a single bad purchase may be quickly overlooked or forgotten, but in tough times, every expenditure is scrutinized. Provide the assurance your customers seek with generous service guarantees, regular follow-up and speedy follow-through on any queries or complaints.

4. In tough times, people spend less time travelling, wining and dining, and more time carefully shopping for each and every purchase. Giving good service enhances the customer's shopping experience, and boosts your own company image. When times are good, people move fast and sometimes don't notice your efforts. In tighter times, people move more cautiously, and notice every extra effort that you make.

5. When money is tight, many people experience a sense of lower self-esteem. When they get good service from your business it boosts their self-image. And when they feel good about themselves, they feel good about you. And when they feel good about you, they buy.

6. In tough times, people talk more with each other about saving money and getting good value. "Positive word of mouth" is a powerful force at any time. In difficult times, even more ears will be listening. Be sure the words spoken about your business are good ones.

So giving good service in tough times makes good business sense. But how do you actually achieve it? Here are eight proven principles you can use. I call them "The Secrets of Superior Service":

1. Understand how your customers' expectations are rising and changing over time. What was good enough last year may not be good enough now. Use customer surveys, interviews and focus groups to really understand what your customers want, what they value, and think about what they are getting, (or not getting) from your business.

2. Use quality service to differentiate your business from your competition. Your products must be reliable and up to date ... but your competitors' are, too. Your delivery systems must be fast and user-friendly, but so are your competitors'!

Make a real difference by providing personalized, responsive and "extra-mile service" that stands out in a unique way that customers will appreciate, and remember.

3. Set and achieve high service standards. Go beyond basic and expected levels of service to provide your customers with desired and even surprising interactions. Determine the "norm" for service in your industry, and then find a way to go beyond it. Give more choice than "usual", be more flexible than "normal", be "faster" than the average and extend a "better" warranty than all the others. Your customers will notice your higher standards. But eventually they'll be copied by your competitors, too. So don't slow down. Keep on improving!

4. Learn to manage your customer's expectations. You can't always give customers everything their hearts desire. Sometimes you need to bring their expectations into line with what you know you can deliver.

The best way to do this is by first building a reputation for making and keeping clear promises. Once you have established a base of trust and good reputation, you only need to ask your customers for their patience in the rare circumstances when you cannot meet their first requests. Nine times out of 10 they will extend the understanding and the leeway that you need.

The second way to manage customer's expectations is with the tactic called "Under Promise, then Over Deliver". It works like this: Your customer wants something done FAST. You know it will take one hour to complete. Don't tell your customer! Let them know you will rush the project...but then promise 90 minutes. Then, when you are done in just an hour (as you knew you would be all along), your customer will be delighted that you actually finished the job "so quickly" .

5. Bounce back with effective service recovery. Sometimes things do go wrong. When it happens to your customers, do everything you can to set things right again. Fix the problem. Show sincere concern for any discomfort, frustration or inconvenience. Then "do a little bit more" by giving your customers something positive to remember - a token of goodwill, a small gift of appreciation, a discount on future orders, or an upgrade to a higher class of product.

This is not the time to lay blame for what went wrong, or to calculate the costs of repair. Restoring customer goodwill is worth the price in future orders and new business.

6. Appreciate your complaining customers. Customers with complaints can be your best allies in building and improving your business. They point out where your system is faulty, procedures are weak or problematic. They show you where your products are below expectations or your service doesn't measure up. They point out areas where your competitors are getting ahead, or where your staff is falling behind. These are the same insights and conclusions that people pay consultants to provide. But a "complainer" gives them to you free!

And remember, for every one person who complains, there are many more who won't even bother to tell you. The others just take their business elsewhere. At least the complainer gives you a chance to reply and set things right.

7. Take personal responsibility. In many organizations, people are quick to blame others for problems or difficulties at work: managers blame staff, staff blame managers, engineering blames sales, sales blames marketing and everyone blames finance. This doesn't help. In fact, with all the finger pointing going on, it tends to make things worse. Blaming yourself doesn't work either. No matter how many mistakes you may have made, tomorrow is another chance to do better. You need high self-esteem to give good service. Feeling "ashamed" doesn't help.

It doesn't make sense to blame the computers, the system or the budget, either. This kind of justification only prolongs the pain before the necessary changes take place. The most reliable way to bring about constructive change in your organization is to Take Personal Responsibility and help make good things happen. Make recommendations, propose new ideas, give your suggestions, volunteer to help out with problem-solving teams and projects.

8. See the world from your customers' point of view. We often get so caught up in our own world that we lose sight of what our customers actually experience.

Make time to stand on the other side of the counter, or listen on the other end of the phone. Be a "mystery shopper" at your own place of business. Or be a customer for your competition. What you notice is what your customers experience every day!

Finally, remember that service is the currency that keeps our economy moving. I serve you in one business, you serve me in another. When either of us improves, the economy gets a little better. When both of us improve, people are sure to take notice. When everyone improves, the whole world grows stronger and closer together. Copyright Ron Kaufman

Local research from KRIL

Two years after it was incorporated as a member of the Golden Key Group, Key Research & Information Ltd., (KRIL) has broken new ground in the field of research in Sri Lanka, with the conclusion of the country's first island-wide socio-political survey.

The survey, which covers political issues, including the ethnic crisis, as well as economic, social, educational and policy issues, was presented to leaders of the government and the opposition recently., a news release said.

The conclusion of this latest and largest project by KRIL, has seen the company's emergence as a potential major player in the local market research arena, with emphasis on opinion polls, attitude surveys and electronic surveys on the Internet, the Golden Key Group's Chief Executive Director Khavan Perera said.

Explaining that KRIL was initially created to service the research and information needs of Ceylinco Consolidated, the company's Director/General Manager Yusuf Noordeen said KRIL has grown into a fully-fledged research company employing 75 field interviewers. "Our strength has been our ability to work on an island-wide basis, covering even some of the conflict areas in the north and east." he said.

Among the standard services offered to clients are opinion polls, market definition surveys, attitude surveys, trend analysis and forecasting, syndicated research, product formulation studies, advertising effectiveness studies and concept tests. KRIL is also the only company in Sri Lanka which is geared to offer Electronic Market Surveys on the Internet.

"A unique feature of' KRIL is its ability, and willingness, to undertake opinion polls and surveys on even the most contentious political and social issues," Noordeen said. "Nothing is too controversial or sensitive for us."

In its two years of operation, Key Research has been commissioned to conduct surveys in a wide range of sectors, incl uding manufacturing, finance, banking, industry, garments, computers and IT, insurance, private security and housing. The company's work has covered the full gamut of qualitative research, quantitative research and opinion surveys.

Lankan products in Latin America

Orders obtained and interest shown by the buyers at the first ever Sri Lankan trade mission to Chile last month has given much hopes about the prospects for promoting Sri Lankan products in the Latin American market. Products which secured substantial orders were garments, handloom textile products and shoes, tea, coconut fibre products, garment accessories, laundry soap and activated carbon. Orders received during the display totalled up to Rs. 40 million, a news release said.

Chile is considered the gateway to South America as most products are re exported to neighboring Argentina, Peru, Paraguay and Bolivia.

The Export Development Board which organized the trade delegation in collaboration with the honorary consul for Sri Lanka in Chile and the Chamber of Commerce in Chile, has made the proposition to establish a trade centre in Chile for distribution of Sri Lankan products in Chile and in the neighboring countries.

This will alleviate the problems due to distance and long period of delivery.

South Asia worst governed in the world: UNDP Report

By Feizal Samath

A United Nations-supported study on human development in South Asia has slammed governments for corruption, an inefficient bureaucracy and discrimination of women, and says the region is one of the worst governed in the world.

"South Asia has a history of democratic institutions but studies show that the democracy that is practised here is not at all condusive for the welfare of the people," Khadija Haq, president of the Islamabad-based Mahbub Ul Haq Centre for Human Development (HDC) said in Colombo on Tuesday.

She was speaking at the launch of the 1999 Human Development report for South Asia prepared by the HDC and supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDC is the brainchild of Khadija's husband, Mahbub Ul Haq, an eminent economist and former Finance and Planning Minister of Pakistan.

Haq, who died last year, was the founder and architect of UNDP's world-renowned Human Development Reports that were launched in 1990. This year's report titled "The crisis of governance", deals with a range of issues like poverty, corruption, governance, economies, military spending, gender discrimination and social injustice.

It says that South Asia remained a region divided between the hopes of the rich and the despair of the poor in which the richest one-fifth earned almost 40 percent of the region's income and the poorest one-fifth "makes do with less than 10 percent.""...where today begins the struggle of survival for 115 million poverty-ridden destitutes, and tomorrow threatens the future of 395 million illiterate adults; where women are often denied basic human rights; and minorities continue to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. At the threshold of the 21st century this is the South Asia that we live in," the report noted.Peter Witham, UNDP Resident Representative in Sri Lanka, said the Haq-guided Human Development Reports have had a tremendous impact in the world and revolutionized the way the UN system approached development."There has been an enormous impact on development arising out of these reports," he said.South Asia, the report says, was facing a crisis of governance which, if left unchecked, could halt the region's democratic progress and economic social wellbeing of its teeming millions.

It spoke of the nuclear crisis in Pakistan and India; weak coalition governments in India and Sri Lanka that are unable to guarantee a full term in office; political demonstrations and strikes that force Bangladesh to regularly shut down and urban chaos from the streets of Karachi to the war-ravaged Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka.

"All the nations face the pernicious evils of endemic corruption, social exclusion and inefficient civil services which plague them uniformly."Income disparities in South Asia were one of the largest in the world with women suffering the most. The report said South Asia had emerged as one of the most poorly governed regions in the world with exclusion of the voiceless majority, unstable political regimes and poor economic management.

"The systems of governance have become unresponsive and irrelevant to the needs and concerns of the people," it said.In many South Asian states, democracy was fast turning into an empty ritual with elections being the only bridge between the state and society, the report said but noted however that voter interest was also fast fading.

The report said that while trade taxes, overall budget deficits, military spending as a percentage of combined health and education expenditures have declined and foreign investment has risen, only one percent paid taxes, capital expenditure had fallen, the number of non-performing loans was rising and the black economy was around 25-35 percent of GDP (gross domestic product).

Though South Asia has undertaken structural adjustments in recent years, the burden of adjustment fell on the poor with social and development expenditure being slashed.Deprivation made South Asia an ideal breeding ground for crime and violence, it said.

Besides being ravaged by a 17-year long civil war, Sri Lanka had the region's highest rate of murders and armed robberies with nine murders and 20 armed robberies per 100,000 people. Bangladesh recorded the region's highest rate of car thefts and rapes per 100,000 people while India witnessed 23,000 dowry deaths since 1994.

"With life so insecure and liberty so vulnerable, South Asia is in need of a new compact between people and the state," the report said reflecting on the large number of battles between competing interests pitting caste against caste, race against race.

The UN-backed report also dealt at length on corruption saying the evidence from South Asia was stark."If corruption levels in India were reduced to those in the Scandinavian countries, investment rates could increase annually by 12 percent and the GDP growth rate by almost 1.5 percent.

If Bangladesh were to improve the integrity of its bureaucracy to Uruguay's level, its yearly GDP growth could rise. And if Pakistan were to reduce corruption to the Singapore level, its annual per capital GDP over the period 1960-1985 could have been much higher.

"The report said that corruption in South Asia was unique because it led to promotion not prison and a flight of capital while resulting in massive human deprivation and even more extreme income inequalities. The report said that South Asia had one of the world's most buoyant NGO sectors with, for instance, a mushrooming of over 100,000 non governmental organisations in the region.

Of these 25,000 are in India, 19,000 in Bangladesh, 10,000 in Pakistan, about 18,000 in Nepal and some 30,000 in Sri Lanka."Some of these NGOs are quite small and exist only on paper. But many NGOs have a national impact and some - including Sri Lanka's Sarvodaya movement and the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh - are international role models," it noted.

The private sector in South Asia should have been revitalised through liberalised policies but the state's often pervasive influence in economic activities hindered growth in this sector. The report said that over-valued exchange rates and trade controls not only retarded export growth but also ended up transferring resources from agriculture to the non-agricultural sectors."The private sector became a "mirror" image of the public sector - inefficient, reliant on subsidies and forever infant," it said.HDC president Haq said that next year's report would focus on gender and disparities."South Asia is the most gender-insensitive region in the world and has failed women and children in all social aspects - education, health or politics. Previous reports have raised these issues but the situation seems to get worse," she warned.

Haq said the HDC planned to present a comprehensive analysis on the gender issue with inputs from gender experts in the region. "We are looking at the whole gender question in South Asia - where we were then and where we are now," she noted.

Sony music appoints Maharaja sole distributor

Sony Music India has appointed The Maharaja Organization Limited as its sole distributor for Sri Lanka. This is in keeping with the business development plan that has been initiated by Sony Music India.

Sony Music India is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Inc (SMIE) New York. Sony Music is represented in more than 60 countries worldwide. The company has an impressive roster of artistes like Michael Jackson, Bruce Springteen, Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Pearl Jam, Savage Garden, Babyface etc. SMEI's repertoire also includes film soundtracks like the Oscar winning Titanic, Men In Black, Jerry Maguire to name a few, a news release said.

Shipping

Three females among 1500 men

The German language offers a very simple mechanism to distinguish whether a profession is carried out by a man or a woman: the ending "in".

Take Germanay's chancellor Gerhard Schroder, for example. He is called a Politiker. But the federal health minister Andrea Fischer, who is a woman is called a Politikerim. Doctors,. lawyers, even engineers— all traditionally male professions - offer a female form in the language.

So logic would tell you that a female captain would be addressed as Kapitanin, as her male counterpart is known as a Kapitan. But no, the oh-so-logical German language stops here. The word Kapitanin does not exist. And actually this comes as little surprise when you consider that only three women are registered as captains and masters in Germany at the See-Berufsgenossenschaft, the statutory accident insurance for seamen, or rather seapeople.

Just to give you a general idea, these three women have some 1500 male counterparts. Indeed, a life at sea is not one often associated with the "weaker sex".

But'there are quite a few women out there on the seven seas and they have some interesting stories to tell.

These experiences are part of the exhibition "Women at Sea" currently being shown in the Kehdinger Kustenschiffahrts Museum in Wischhafen, small town on the River Elbe to the west of Hamburg. "A woman who wants to become a sailor should be able to cope well along and know her limitation," says one seawoman.

"She'should also be a bit above things and not be thrown off when confronted with prejudices."

As the exhibition shows, women are indeed subjected to intolerance from their male colleagues and often have to prove their worth.

According to one nautical officer, the captain on her first ship greeted her with the words "women and pigs do not belong on board"

"But later on, he was very taken by my work," she added. The concept for "Women at Sea" was developed by German historian Christine Keitsch. "I hit on the idea of this study through a friend who was studying to become a ship's engineer in Flensburg," she says.

Dr. Keitsch contacted over 100 seagoing women during her research.

These women have provided pictures, documentation, shipping books, uniforms and much more for the exhibition.

The extensive interviews on training aud working situations, life on board and job perspectives were the basis not only for the exhibition, but also for an accompanying book.

Dr Keitsch questioned women in more "traditional" maritime professions, such as stewardesses and nurses, but also radio officers, nautical officers, mechanics, ship engineers and women in the navy.

Twenty of these exchanges are summarised in the book to portray the broad spectrum of maritime areas in which women are today working.

"With this project, we aimed to take a look at the history of women in German shipping, and in particular their current situation on the bridge, on deck or in the machine room of a ship," says Jutta Glusing, head of the Flensburg shipping museum which last year put together the exhibition and showed it for the first time. According to Dr Keitsch, most of the women she talked to did not regret their career choice.

Perspectives for seawomen are mixed. One Hamburg shipowner, who is feeling the lack of a new generation of seamen in Germany, is quoted as saying his company would "take any woman it could at the moment".

But Hans-Georg Benver from the Hamburg employment office reports that most shipping companies are reluctant when asked to take on a woman as an apprentice. "Every time, I have to start back at zero, with few exceptions."

The scepticism of owners was something even the exhibition organisers experienced. Although many shipping schools and institutions, such as the See-Berufsgenossenschaft, or the association of German shipowners Verband Deubcher Reeder, helped with documentation, shipping companies reacted extremely. hesitantly, says Dr Keitsch. The seaman's profession is still too strongly associated with conservative male role models and the woman who dares to penetrate this typically male domain is not only denied her technical capabilities, but also the competence of working responsibly with ships," added Dr Glusing.

"Christian seafaring is a man's profession, that will never change," said Annaliese Tietz, who was the first German woman to receive her master's licence for oceangoing vessels in 1955, yet was never allowed to work as a captain.

"But there will always be women who are attracted to this profession and are up to carrying it out."

LATEC buys 60% of Ekala Engineering

The LATEC Engineering and Management Services( PVT ) Ltd bought 60% shares of Ekala EngineeringWorks Ltd., from its holders Sino Lanka Automobiles (PVT) Ltd recently.

LATEC will invest Rs 25 million within 12 months to renovate the workshop at Ekala, MD Latec Ravi Wettasinghe has said in an interview. Latec the proposed bus assembling project to build 5350 buses will be expanded to this workshop too, he said.

Seylan Private Banking

The recently opened Seylan Private Banking launched the second component of its exclusive service, Investment Services. Seylan Private Banking is an exclusive service that caters for all of an individual's financial requirements under one roof.

In all financial matters Seylan Private Banking aims to give the best advice in a highly confidential and personal relationship. It also aims to make the life of clients easy by offering all the products and services of the bank throughout the one point of contact, a news release said.

Having first understood their clients' objectives and risk tolerance level Seylan Private Banking will give advice and recommendations of the best investments to achieve them. Hisham Sheriff who recently joined the Bank from a leading broker bringing 12 years experience leads the Investment Service

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