I can still remember when working with Toyobo Co Ltd., & Kanematsu Gosho Ltd., in Japan ‘the customer is god’ is the sentiment which underpins the best companies' customer-care strategies. So, what exactly makes excellent customer care? In the West, customer care has become what one CEO called the ‘discipline of the business’. In 1990s when I joined Malaysia Airlines (MAS), putting the customer first for its ‘Destination Service Excellence’ (DSE) - was considered by some to be the forerunner of all contemporary customer service and culture change initiatives in Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific region.
But to what extent is the investment in customer service producing a rear pay-back for these organizations, as intended? Most customers are no longer seduced by the window dressing of some customer-service programs. Customers have become so aware of what has been done apparently in their name that their threshold of service expectation has been raised beyond being grateful for mere surface display. Based on my 5 decades of working experience, I found what customers want is depth - substance - to the service that are promised, a feeling of complete comfort and delight that comes from more than superficialities, a feeling that what they see is not a veneer but the wood from which the whole company is cut. Excellence is the way we live our lives.
I convinced my students at Graduate Business Schools that “A company's product or service consists of individual elements, which separately, collectively directly influence customer satisfaction. Between them, the elements - known as the Satisfaction Elements - represent every aspect in their companies.”
During weekend walkabouts with my family, I spotted at Richiamo Coffee Sunway Gandaria that the Culture Element of employees teamwork has defined value for money as the perceived worth in each customer's mind of the experience outcome from joint value creation for every sales & service transaction.
Zulkifly Baharom (hajizul50@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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