Customer care: Liability or Reliability?

There is no doubt that the sole purpose of starting a business is earning money. In order to achieve this they enhance their production scale along with accessing new markets. Enhanced production and making new customers is an inter-related phenomenon. At the same time, the investors invest heavily in retaining existing customers.

Since a market is nothing but another name for a bunch of customers, the analysis of market forces and that is why the needs of improvements in an organisation, the wants of customers, the demand of products and supply of goods revolves around the study of customers. To attract newer ones and to retain existing customers, organisations set up customer-care departments.

Organisations make new customers by working very hard, but they have to work harder still in order to retain them. To retain customers, along with achieving other goals, organisations devise and adopt SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures). It is a very simple concept. If an organisation can achieve customer satisfaction, it will get customer retention.

And every individual customer is different. Therefore, in order to satisfy every single customer, good organisations go beyond the SOPs and JDs (Job Description). And this is a concept that is becoming common practice in Pakistan as well.

A customer-care department bridges the gap between customers and the organisation. This department knows, or is supposed to know what a customer actually wants, what he needs, what he thinks, and what his feedback about the product is; and above all, what is his perception of and loyalty for the organisation.

Customer-care is one of the most stressful jobs in the world as it has to buffer down the pressures from within the organisation and from outside.

The employees have to know everything about the organisation and its competition and to have skills of people handling in the minimum time frame.

Missing customer strategy

David Rance, CEO of Round and a former customer care director for a UK based telco, says, “One of the key questions I ask from the organisations all the time is ‘What is your customer strategy? Most organisations don’t seem to have one. They have a business strategy, a marketing strategy, a sales strategy and sometimes even a customer service strategy. But that’s all very internally focused and as a result it’s unlikely to be aligned or consistent for customers.”

What good organisations do?

It is said that the voice of customer care remains unheard because it is considered to be a department which does not earn money, rather it incurs expenses to maintain its business. And other departments like sales and marketing are given more importance because they bring in money.

This is a misconception. “Retaining customers earn more money than generating customers.” This is the strategy of successful organisations.

Trend in Pakistan

The recent economic slump has hit all sectors which forced them to change their strategies. From banking to telecom, almost all sectors have  opted to outsource instead of having permanent staff to serve the customers. The idea was not as bad as it apparently seemed to be because it not only reduced the cost to serve each customer but it also generated revenue from different customer care channels. The good part of this whole transition was this that the organisations made conscious efforts not to compromise on the quality of services although it shattered the customers’ experience with the organisations initially however it gradually improved. But to provide outstanding services to the customers in the existing competitive environment, organisations have to train contractual employees as everyone in the industry is convinced that to minimise churn threats,  organisations have to rely on customer care as it plays a vital role in developing strong relationship with customers,  which brings business.

Liability or reliability?

It is the organisation that decides whether customer care is a liability or reliability however the truth is, customer care is a key area but the condition is; you have to listen to what they say as they speak the customers’ language. And the customer is the backbone of every business and so is customer care.

Fuad Ahmad works in the Pakistan telecom sector ([e-mail])

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th,  2011.