Universal truth : The customer is not always right

Employees need to know how it feels to be disgruntled client.

The old adage, “the customer is king” is considered as universal truth in the business industry. And every business organisation claims that they follow it religiously. But this is just a half-truth. There are actually two kinds of employees who serve an organisation. These employees believe in not just two kinds but two different ideologies of handling customers. One of my friends experienced the negative side of this a few days back. Let me now give ownership of the narration to my friend and he will tell you his story.

“There is a three star hotel in Multan. It is well-reputed and high-profile personalities stay there quite often. The staff of the hotel is considered the most disciplined and courteous, in the town.

I am a regular guest at this hotel on business trips because my company has a contract with them. It is my routine to handover my suit to the hotel laundry every night. The laundry then returns my suit early in the morning before I leave my room.

One day, of one such visit last month the laundry man came to me at 8’o clock in the morning (just before when I was planning to leave for the office) and informed me that the pants had a burn-mark from an iron on its left side which he found before ironing the pants. I recalled that nothing was wrong with any of the part of the suit when I left my home, and said as much to the hotel staffer. He however, stuck to his version.

I called in the manager who said that the laundry person was very experienced could not have made the error. He then went on to tell me about their foolproof hiring and that such a thing had never happened before. He then said that the hotel management would do its best to accommodate me because I was such a ‘valuable’ customer.

On investigation, I came to know that one of my senior colleagues had also faced the same issue but he never asked for any adjustments. I continued to make a claim for recovery and was assured that the issue would be resolved within the next 24 hours.

When I reached back hotel next day and asked the receptionist about my complaint, she told me that it was with the assistant manager and she had no update regarding the issue. When I spoke to the assistant manager he said the manager, who was on leave was the only one authorised to make a decision. And he would not be back for another two days.

My stay was due to end in a day but the hotel management said I had no choice other than to wait for the managers return, and refused to give me his personal contact number.

At this point I lost patience and warned the hotel management that I would complain to my organization about their poor customer service and the consequences could include the termination of the contract with my company. The assistant manager relented and conveyed this to the manager who called me, promising that I would be compensated within a week, either in cash or a new pair of pants.

After that I got several calls from the hotel management, to discuss my issue, saying they would investigate the issue and give me compensation. I got tired of such shows of mismanagement and asked the hotel management not to disturb me until the issue was resolved.

In the meantime, I called my admin department and told them arrange my stay at a different hotel on my next visit, citing the lack of customer service, and recounted my tale. Soon after that I got a call from the manager promising me a new pair of pants which he claimed would reach me in a week.

Ok, so that was my friends story. And I am not sure if he will get a replacement, but I am sure he will never forget the experience.

What made his experience bad was not the SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) but because the staff followed SOPs blindly. Sadly, majority of employees tend to stick to SOPs as Hussain experienced and very few employees base their customer service on “Excellent Customer Experience”. This second group of employees evaluate their performance on the basis of customers’ experience, not on the basis of SOPs. And these employees are an organisations real assets. They earn customers’ loyalty for a life-time. They know that SOPs are designed to facilitate customers and that SOPs work for 95% of the time. But there are exceptions where SOPs are not enough. That is where employees need to think out of the box (SOPs).

Organisations do not need to arrange trainings for their employees to think out of the box. They should just make sure that employees know what the customer experience actually is and how would they feel if they were in the customer’s place. Good customer experience should be the only priority for any organisation; it does not matter if you achieve it through SOPs or by going beyond the SOPs.

the writer works as a training specialist in mobilink pakistan

Published in The Express Tribune, April 11^th,  2011.