Customer Service.

What’s customer service? I asked this question to friends. We Goans are so involved in the tourism industry that we hear these two words quite often, so I wanted to know just what they meant and what they meant to people. One said: “Standing around wearing some make-up and a smart uniform, greeting with hands folded and smiling all the time at everyone.” You mean like in airlines? I asked. Yes, was the answer. Another said: “Getting mobile phones or televisions or fridges or computers repaired, or the technicians who repair those.” Yet another said: “Call-centre agents who sit phoning customers.” An online definition says ‘Customer Service is the process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service. Often, Customer Service takes place while performing a transaction for the customer, such as making a sale or returning an item. I asked my friends whether they considered lawyers’ clients and doctors’ patients as customers. They looked shocked. But, since the client/patient is paying for a service, s/he is a customer, no? No, was the firm reply, given with no explanations, no reasons. To add to my friends’ consternation, I explained that it was illogical that a doctor and a hair-dresser (the word barber is no longer used in polite society) should charge the same amount of money for giving 30 minutes of advice or activity. It takes a doctor takes years of training, skill and experience to know which tests to prescribe and declare a customer normal after seeing the results. The hair-dresser takes three months, take or give a couple of weeks, to learn to expertly cut, curl, straighten, wash, rinse, dry, plait, bun, roll and style hair. Yet, people are willing to pay more for the latter because they sit in a comfort zone, not in a waiting area, get pampered without experiencing pain/nausea/breathlessness. How strange is that. I’d imagine that one would want to pay more for being in good health. But the fact that people happily pay for a meal in a hotel many times the amount they’d pay to get their dental problems resolved proves me wrong. Back to Customer Service; it is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest". The more complicated the components, the more innovative the product and the higher the price, the better the Customer Service is the thumb rule. In a tourism-dependent place like Goa, hotels, shops, cops, taxi-drivers (sigh, we have to rope them in everywhere) must be trained pro-actively not only to say ‘hullo’ and ‘good-time-of-day’ nicely, but in their jobs, too. The old technicians in the Central Laboratory at Porvorim don’t pain or injure my 88-year-old relative when they draw blood from her veins to check for sugar: they don’t need to smile politely and say pleasantries. The proficiency gives the customer satisfaction. Taxi-drivers who help with luggage, receptionists who freely share information on cheap shopping-centres, postmen who fill in forms for illiterate peasants are all doing Customer Service of a fair without anyone writing about them. A good customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer holds towards the organization. A tourist who has enjoyed his hotel stay will return. Or will tell his friends to visit the place. A telephone operator who speaks clearly, accurately and patiently wins over customers as much as a slick marketing executive. If you’re in business, make sure your telephone operators are well trained. Professionalism works. Customer Service includes taped messages that tell me to press a number for English and another for technical problems and yet another for complaints and a fourth to speak to a human being. I prefer directly speaking to a proper voice and giving instant feedback. Recently we bought a computer. When we tried to load a very basic, home-use software on it, an error message informed us that the disc didn’t have enough space. The company, when contacted said, that’s how the product is made, if I wanted the software, I’d have to either be constantly online to use the free online software or buy an addition to attach to the computer. No one from the company could tell me why such a user-unfriendly product was being sold at all in the market. Make in India promoters must make note of such examples of poor customer experiences. Make in India need not be shabby or sub-standard. Make in India can well be superior to or at least equal to the best in the world. Read about Kiran Muzumdar-Shaw’s work and you’ll know it’s possible. Criticism keeps quality high. Customer Service was born out of criticism. If one wants to improve, one ASKS FOR criticism and takes it to heart. Customer Service assists customers in making cost effective decisions, buying suitable products (like they do in shoe-shops) and using that product correctly. See the stall-walas at ‘exhibitions’ showing the public the various uses of peelers. Customer Service includes assistance in planning, installation, training, trouble-shooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. Plumbers, carpenters and electricians are the ones to be trained in these points. Architects, and garbage disposal experts, too. These services even may be done at customer's side where he/she uses the product or service. technical support Automated customer service[edit] Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means[citation needed]. Examples of automated means are Internet sites. An advantage with automated means is an increased ability to provide service 24-hours a day, which can, at least, be a complement to customer service by persons.[5] Another example of automated customer service is by touch-tone phone, which usually involves a main menu, and the use of the keypad as options (i.e. "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish", etc.) However, in the Internet era, a challenge has been to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce. "Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it's easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena."[6] An automated online assistant with avatar providing automated customer service on a web page. Examples of customer service by artificial means are automated online assistants that can be seen as avatars on websites.[5] It can avail for enterprises to reduce their operating and training cost.[5] These are driven by chatterbots, and a major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing.[5] Metrics and measuring customer service results[edit] The two main ways of gathering feedback are: customer surveys and Net Promoter Score measurement, used for calculating the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer.[citation needed] Customer service metrics that are followed by companies depend on the tool used for customer service. Most popular metrics include: • first response time, • average response time, • total handle time, • customer satisfaction score (CSAT).[citation needed] Instant feedback[edit] Recently[when?], many organizations have implemented feedback loops that allow them to capture feedback at the point of experience. For example, National Express in the UK has invited passengers to send text messages whilst riding the bus. This has been shown to be useful, as it allows companies to improve their customer service before the customer defects, thus making it far more likely that the customer will return next time.[7] Technology has made it increasingly easier for companies to obtain feedback from their customers. Community blogs and forums give customers the ability to give detailed explanations of both negative as well as positive experiences with a company/organization. Standardization[edit] There are few standards on this topic. ISO and The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI) have published the following ones: • ISO 9004:2000, on performance improvement • ISO 10001:2007, on customer service conduct • ISO 10002:2004, on quality management in handling customer complaints • ISO 10003:2007, on dispute resolution • ISO 10004:2012, on monitoring and measuring • The International Customer Service Standard (TICSS) • CCQA Customer Care Standard (Care Quality Alliance) www.CCQA.org.uk There is also an Information Technology service management standard: ISO/IEC 20000:2005. Its first part concerns specifications and its second part the code of practice Some have argued [8] that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy. To address this argument, many organizations have employed a variety of methods to improve their customer satisfaction levels, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).[citation needed] • Demand chain • Institute of Customer Service (UK) • Interactive voice response • Live support software • Privacy policy • Professional services automation • Public Services • Sales • Sales process engineering • Sales territory • Service climate • Service system • Social skills • Support automation • Technical support • Help desk software References[edit] 1. Jump up ^ Buchanan, Leigh (1 March 2011). "A Customer Service Mak

Never Mind the Floods

“Whatta month,” exclaimed Bai Goanna on the last day of August. “Floods, rain, more rain. And then the government does away with Article 370, BJP’s stalwarts dying, a Major General dismissed for sexual harassment, fish still being injected with formalin, taxi-mafia being tamed by the CM, so many things happening.” “Do you,” said Shri Husband, “have any idea what Article 370 is about?” To my, and definitely to Shri Husband’s, surprise, Bai Goanna could tell us the pluses, minuses and in-betweens of whatever has happened in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, what is likely to happen and the pros and cons of the Parliament’s most controversial recent decision regarding that region/ State/Union Territory. Before we could react, she explained that she’d been watching a lot of television lately and hence her knowledge of current events. Ah, technology, keeps everybody informed, stupid or intelligent, illiterate or schooled… What would we do without television crews sitting in Army boats? Does it occur to anyone that the Press guys might actually be hampering work? I remember, during the tsunami rescue operations in Tamil Nadu, reporters had to be given shelter, food, whatnot by the public servants (cops, municipality workers): they were coming the way of the real rescue teams. Also, spiritual-messengers from modern ashrams teaching the distraught to de-stress when what the ‘victims’ needed was drinking water, food, dry clothes, preventive (allopathic) medicines and sanitary napkins. …Bai Goanna was quoting leaders, writers, politicians, historians… pat! Shri Husband and I almost simultaneously vocally agreed on one thing: “We have to thank the electricity department of Goa and Saligao-Porvorim in particular, for keeping the facility going come storm or blocked drain-water.” Shri Husband took the first breath and asked me: “What does blocked-drain-water mean?” He’s the only one in India who’d ask such a question. And my grammar-Miss in school. Then, having successfully irritated me, he said: “I’m joking, re. Really, the light-men and the water-men did a fantastic job, hanh. So, also, the fire-men and the poder.” Truly, our village, marooned by the Guirim flood and the Porvorim traffic, was not much inconvenienced thanks to the utility men. Except for the one day when the government of Goa declared a holiday, come hell or high water, our teachers and students made their way to school for exams, sometimes wet, but always smiling. The scowls were more on the faces of habitual cribbers, more to do with in-house politics, less with Nature’s fury. In cities, the municipality workers who are the world’s greatest shirkers, according to some, rose to the occasion to clean up whatever mess they could. A question of too little too late, perhaps, but they did it. In our village, the postman and the gas-delivery chaps did their work with a sense of duty-is-duty. Valor, guys. No vegetables bothered my wado as, a rarity in Goa, it’s a vegetarian wado. Please note, I do not use the juvenile word, veggie; always the full forms, vegetables and vegetarian. The nustekar, too, unfailingly made his rounds to supply ‘fish-food’, as English-speaking Goans say, to us ‘fishies’ (like ‘veggies’). Formalin-laced or not, it’s a treat to eat tisrya-ek-shipi with hot rice and bhindi-solan kodi when it’s pouring. Available only in people’s homes. The fungus, the cobwebs, the damp clothes, the sunless days, we smile through them all, we Indians. Now, with Facebook connecting us, we smile into our mobile phones and then share the pics with the world, for those who know us even vaguely, to say ‘awesome’. I often wonder how many of those from non-affected areas contribute to the rehabilitation of losers of limb, life or property. Even those who claim they support the Indian Armed Forces and are proud of them, seldom give jobs or pay for the tuitions of the dependents of the soldiers/airmen/sailors in times of need. We’re still into the mode ‘government must do it’. I dislike this question that reporters ask: ‘what has the government done for you?’ We citizens love cutting down trees, using tons of plastic, refusing to segregate our waste, showing off our bullying talents, and we expect our elected representatives to be responsible. Ha. Strangely, whilst our national media was crying itself hoarse defending or attacking the government’s way of dealing with the removal of Article 370, an important national event, our school teachers were worried about seating arrangements, supervision, answer-sheet collections and marking. Truly, the lives of the migrant junta and we who deal with the daily living of their children, our students, is far removed from what’s happening in Parliament, Delhi. When the new Education Policy comes to us, we’ll wake up. Until then, it’s chalta-hai. By the time this goes into print, Ganapati would have visited and gone. The rains, too. A large number of us, unfazed by natural calamities and other such silly words, would have bought and discarded un-dissolvable statues of the beloved Lord. The traffic snarls and cars that need unnecessary trips to workshops are mere nuisances in times of heavy rains and floods. We in Goa take those in our stride. Tillari and other faraway places are, well, too far for us to worry about. Ditto with forests. We urban folk are happily detached from reality. I wasn’t surprised when a modern, well-informed mother told me there are no Dalits in Goa; her daughter had heard about the floods, saw them on television, also, but her world begins in Porvorim and ends in Panaji, so watching them on screen was no different from watching a movie in Inox. They faced the problem of not being able to celebrate a birthday properly because favourite restaurants weren’t getting the correct ingredients for the items on the menu. In my school, in contrast, the parents are worried about their next meal. The women who make the midday meal made do with green grams for a couple of days; but they did their duty well, cooking it in different ways, making sure it was freshly cooked and served hot. Teachers managed with leaking ceilings and sniffles. Never mind the floods, was the attitude, we’re there to make the school run, we’ll do it. Floods? said an acquaintance, it’s a temporary thing. Life goes on, true. Without safe drinking water, with destroyed homes, dead pets, it takes time, but life goes on. Right? What worries some is the fact that the auto-industry has a slowdown happening.