Customer Care is still a Cost in this town!!
A lot has been said and written regarding customer care function all over the world. There are many who have done some considerable work in service industry and some have global prestige as service gurus and all these are quoted in Pakistani industry too when it comes to any discussion of customer care or service.Customer is the king, Customer is the boss, customer is paying your salary, customer is your actual employer...all sounds logical and can be elaborated by 100s of examples but do we really put efforts to live up to the spirits of these lines. For some isolated instances it maybe yes however as a practice it's a question mark "?".
Customer Care divisions are entrapped by the chains of strict Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for most of the Pakistani business sector. Customer Care is not treated as investment and it remains as cost center and in all drives to control costs it gets a hit like all other costs.
In order to achieve KPI targets people forget customer, as for them their daily report matters more than customer's issues. People tend to justify the KPIs for customer care personnel however the theoretical facts remain the same that for customer services there should be only one target i.e. "Satisfied Customer"
The investment in customer care will not return unless it is really treated as investment. What is the use of such KPIs where customers leave you for not listening or mishandling? Customer Care function is a failure if it fails to turn customers into advocates. Every effort, every system and every process should ease customer in such a way that customer start telling people about his/her service provider.
Customers are getting aware of their rights through media and education and the future of all markets will be shaped by their service standards and not by the quality of their products alone. Every good and bad experience is tweeted, facebooked, or blogged in some minutes after happening and this is free publicity. Give people good things to share else bad is on its way..
