60% customers dissatisfied with poor service - Dhammika Kalapuge

Over 60 per cent of the customers in Sri Lanka are not satisfied due to the poor service offered by companies.

Institutions should improve and maintain consistency in service standards, said Director Sipcom-1, Dhammika Kalapuge.

He was addressing a seminar on "Spot the Smart Service Seconds" at the Ceylon Continental Hotel on Tuesday.

"Most companies tend to take their happy customers for granted with confidence that they will continue to stay under any circumstances. Happy customers are highly sensitive and with the slightest ill-will by employees a longstanding association could come to an end", he said.

Customer satisfaction is vital for organisational success and employees should strive to improve and be consistent in the standard of service they offer to their customers.

many companies say that though customer service is satisfactory it is not improving. Training and regular review of services will help organisations to win the confidence of their customers.

Kalapuge said negligence of the needs of customers will result in huge losses to companies and the damage to its reputation will be irreparable. As bad news spreads faster than good news, a company will lose its customers within a short period due to its poor customer care.

A leading airline in the United States lost billions of dollars due to a crew member failing to provide a can of Coca Cola to a business class passenger. A careless act brought the airline into disrepute.

He said if complaints of customers are taken positively it will help to improve and maintain consistency of customer service. A leading car manufacturing company gifted a car to a customer following a complaint that he couldn't start his car after buying a certain brand of ice cream.

A study revealed that it was the time taken to start the car that was the cause for the problem and not the ice cream.

A complaint is a gift although it is badly wrapped. Employees should learn to listen to the grievances of customers, acknowledge the complaint and solve the problem. Compensation in some way or another will make the customer happy.

A company cannot deceive its customers often. They will sooner or later realise the trick of the trade and lose confidence in the company. It is not an easy task to win the confidence of a customer once lost.

LF