Peter Drucker noted that “an organization has two
functions, one is innovation and the other is marketing”. And whatever you are
selling whether pensions, insurance, cars, hosing etc. you are selling peace of
mind.
Marketing is very essential in any organization and
may be regarded as the life wire of the organization, but more strategic to the
concept of marketing is that of customer service. This is because customer
service leads to repeat purchases, and according to Lebouef (1989:13) in his
book “How to win a customer and keep him for life” he noted that “the most
important job of any employee including sales people is to create and keep
customers”
Many people including sales representatives and
their managers believed that sales person’s primary job is to make sales and
without doubt, “making sales is important but it creates short term dollar
while creating and maintaining customers and offering customer satisfaction make
long and medium term dollars”(op cited)
The issue of quality customer service prompted
Napoleon Hills to embark on a study. Napoleon Hill devoted over twenty years of
his life trying to study why so few men succeed and so many failed. He went on
to say that he interviewed numerous great men from all walks of life such as
Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Woodrow Wilson etc. He presented the
essence of his findings in his classic bestselling “Think and Grow Rich” One of
Hill’s best recommendation is to cultivate the idea and habit of rendering more
and better service more than that for which you are paid, and before you
realize it, the world is willingly paying you for more than you do”. Today we
call that “building perceived value”, seventy years ago we called it the”Law of
Increasing Returns” (op cited)
But a more interesting story was that of the life
of vice president Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson was the only United States
chief of staff who never went to school not even a primary school. He was a
tailor by profession and was taught how to write and do arithmetic by his wife.
He carved a niche for himself first as a tailor but the success of his
tailoring profession was hinged upon an excellent use of customer relations
with his politician customers who are in serious desire of his well tailored
suits. The relationship between him and his clients became so cordial that they
encouraged him to go into politics. They provided him with both moral and
financial support. He became Mayor of Glennville, member of the Tennessee house
of assembly and later United States house of Representative between 1843-1853,
Governor of Tennessee from 1853 to 1857 and United States Senate (1857 -1862)
and following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, he served as president from
1865 to 1869.
I am not interested in telling history of vice
president Andrew Johnson but I am fascinated to bring this story to highlight on
the gains of an effective customer service. It was an exciting customer
relationship between clients that shot this man to limelight, customer service is
essential to business concern. And according Jeff Hitchman a former managing
Director of Xerox Nigeria. “People are no longer selling but building and
maintaining relationships”, when a relationship is built and maintained it is
like a bond. I could still remember a relationship manger in one of the new
generation banks who followed a managing director of a major electronics
company in 2003 to the burial ceremony of his mother and stayed for almost 5
days with him in the village, though an extreme situation but it buttressed one
thing, he has built a relationship with this man.
An excellent customer service will at the long run
impact positively on sales and marketing department. As Pension Fund
Administrators’ positioned itself for effective customer patronage in the possibility
of National Pension Commission Lifting the window of transfer, customer
relationship will be the determining factor in keeping these customers and one
of the effective ways of maintaining relationships is in resolving customer
complaints, and according to Housley (2005:45) in his book on Marketing,
“resolving customer complaints build customer loyalty” He went on to say that
“it is possible to turn customer complaints into assets.
Most of the complaints among the Pension Fund
Administrators’ customers are Zero balance, double registration, partial funding,
change of name especially among married women failure to generate pin at the
appropriate time, wrong statements, no statements etc. And according to Lebouef
(1987) “a typical dissatisfied customer will tell eight to ten people about the
problem. One in five will tell twenty. It takes about twelve positive service
incident to make up for one negative incident”.
As the pension fund administrators embark on this
onerous task of satisfying the customer, they should always bear in mind that
customers are unique and different, what is applied to customer A may not apply
to customer B.
Let us all remember to satisfy our customer as we celebrate customer service. Happy customer service week
Odunze Reginald C
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