Lack of engagement in customer service.

I went to a particular bank with my wife, as she wanted a new bank card because her previous card had expired. We went to the customer service desk to let them know what we were there for. Not long after we arrived a lady called my wife to come to a desk. Then the process began, she asked all the right questions in terms of what my wife wanted, then afterwards the service became robotic, no eye contact, no engagement and lack of emotion. To summarise this experience she knew the text book knowledge, but she lacked the projected personality of the bank to deliver a positive customer service experience. This was just a typical example of so many businesses I visited.

We where in Nigeria for the globally celebrated October customer service week, the focus was to promote and encourage the customer service experience in my home country. I was really impressed with the knowledge base, Nigeria is definitely up there when it comes to the latest trends in the customer service industry. I mingled and chatted with industry experts, I was really impressed with the intellect shown. A lot is being done behind the scenes with all the latest technology to keep us abreast with the rest of the world.

The challenge and the impression I gained from my trip was simply the lack of engagement with those implementing the process. It's all good having the knowledge but real customer service is down to how you engage with your customers, based on my experience as mentioned above, experts and company's a like need to find a way to truly empower their teams to become the projected personality of their businesses. We need to empower our teams to own their space and them being able to stamp their personality on the service offered. My observation was a lack of confidence from service teams, being too scared to think outside the box, implementing company processes with no empathy and no emotions. Some were too scared to make mistakes, some were more concerned of not being reprimanded rather than satisfying their customers needs there and then. I don't know if this is a cultural ideology, however for someone coming from the outside and looking inwards, this was obvious. This did occur across a lot top businesses as well. But all this can be simply rectified by proper training and the right empowerment tools. There needs to be a cultural shift in terms of how training is delivered to our teams, more engagement is needed to drive the training home. For us to deliver bespoke training to our clients, we need to understand the culture and values of the businesses we engage with. A quote from Richard Branson one of my mentors says "Innovation happens when people are given the freedom to ask questions and the resources and power to find answers." We need to empower our teams with the right tools for them to be confident enough to project the personality of your business and delivering on your brand promise.

Like we say at Stepwise Training "If you don't train them, don't blame them." And finally a quote from Simon Sinek says "Customers will never love your company until your employees love it first." We as customer service experts need to train out team members to bring the customer service experience alive, we need to live it, breath it and sleep it.

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