Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers

IT Helpdesk: “I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop.” Customer : “Ok.” IT Helpdesk : “Did you get a pop-up menu?”
Customer : “No.” IT Helpdesk: “Ok. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?” Customer : “No.” IT Helpdesk : “Ok, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?” Customer: “Sure, you told me to write ‘click’ and I wrote ‘click’.”

Customer service is one of the hardest institutional objectives to get right. And customer service, contrary to popular not-for-profit belief is not limited to for-profit companies. It touches on every single organization that is doing any business or providing any service be it in the private or public sector. A friend of mine sent me a very interesting article from the July-August 2010 edition of the Harvard Business Review. The article, “Stop Trying To Delight Your Customers”, turns the whole customer service approach on its head and instead challenges the age old precept that delighted customers remain loyal customers. The article discusses the results of a study using 75,000 people who had interacted over the telephone with contact center representatives or through self-service channels such as web, voice-prompts, chat and email. A critical finding of this research was that delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty; but reducing their effort –the work they must do to get their problems solved – does. You have to read the rest of the fascinating article to learn more about this contrarian thinking, as I have space constraints here on what I really want to get off my heaving chest regarding customer service.

In your lifetime you will probably have to go outside of the country for official or leisure travel. If you are an ordinary mwananchi like me, you will find yourself lining up at some ungodly hour to be first on the queue for service. Now old hands like me have taken it up a notch by carrying our own tea in a thermos cup, layered clothing for warmth that can be cast off in a heartbeat to reveal a young professional underneath the mounds of sweaters and jackets and the ubiquitous brown envelope that is typically clutched by all visa applicants containing one’s most private documents the likes of which Kenya Revenue Authority would like to get their hands on (other people do this, not me of course). I can therefore – with self-proclaimed authority- declare that consular divisions of diplomatic missions in this country are the worst perpetrators of customer service experiences in the world. My uneducated take on the whole visa application process is that it is a very tedious exercise for the processing officers and the sheer volume of applications leads them to the very tempting conclusion of drawing lots on who gets one and who doesn’t. Alright, let me stop pontificating ceaselessly. I’ve never been denied a visa -yet – but I have missed out on a business trip because I submitted my application late; where late is defined as 2 days before the proposed date of travel. Now this is where I need to understand how visa offices are run. Where I am from, customers understand that certain services are provided within certain time frames. They also realize that to fast track service, more resources will have to be allocated to perform the task in a shorter time frame. Hence, paying an extra fee for expedited service is par for the course because time, my friends, is money. The fast paced and high tech global situation that we live in means that business meetings across borders are requested, required and demanded at the drop of a hat. Business is not conducted like an annual family vacation, planned way in advance and carefully timed to coincide with school holidays and work downtime.

It therefore goes without saying that a visa office should not get sanctimonious and high-handed when you innocently state that you need the visa in 24 hours. Customers (visa applicants) should be listened to and their needs met in as painless and expedited manner as possible. One way to meet these needs is by providing a fast track application process that is charged at a higher fee. It’s not a favor to the applicant, neither is it a guarantee that the visa will be granted. It is simply a recognition that not everyone who saunters into the consular office is looking to travel for marriage, Olympics, World Cup, ICC trial, graduation ceremony or whatever other myriad reasons travellers need to visit the hallowed foreign lands that apply all manner of barriers to entry. Lumping everyone together is telling all of us wananchi that really, in the greater scheme of things, we’re all the same. Our needs are the same, our travel objectives are the same and, most importantly, we are all magnificent forward planners who can look through crystal balls and foretell three weeks in advance that business will require us to make sudden trips.

I get it. Embassies do not need to build customer loyalty. There are constantly people beating down their doors clamoring for entry and service. Further, delighting their customers is neither here nor there. After all, the customers are jumping off cliffs in excitement at simply receiving the precious visa stamp on their passports. So here is some advice to embassies. Stop delighting your customers. Oh, I forgot, you are not in that business anyway. But at least try and reduce the customer effort, that is, the work they must do to get their problems solved. Business travel means that there is business to be done. Yes, that thing that requires consideration for exchange of goods or service is called business. Which consideration will remain in and benefit your country. Make it easy for us to do business with you. As you read this I will be at an embassy this Monday morning making a business visa application. I’m hoping I don’t have to right click for help!

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