ENTREPRENEURSHIP 1, CUSTOMER CARE 2.

Football is a beautiful game. Losing at home is bad though.It is not only attractive from great goals but the crowd plays a very big part in the beauty process. You get to meet new people, the banters and soon, it’s an addiction. The habit carries on to an extent that you have to remind each other of the upcoming fixtures. It’s all fun until you meet the wrong people. I am a victim of serious insults and bad looks that I could not respond to. There is this football buddy who supports Manchester United. He enjoyed banters with my team (Arsenal). A great lad. One Sunday morning a lady approached me and told me off. Wait, “what have I done?” Can’t you watch football alone?” Long story short, it was an uncomfortable situation. I stopped calling the guy up and when we met, I made sure I dint extend my stay with him lest I became an excuse for domestic quarrels. This reminds me of many years ago when as children, we could choose our buddies depending on how their parents treated us. Some parents could literally tell you that you are the reason their children went home late last evening. That was taken as a threat and a reason to avoid them tomorrow. How bad things happen to good people out of actions of a third party.

Relevance? Doing business is tough. You come up with great business ideas, save up, look for financing, good location, brand… finally you have it. You are lucky if you get it right on first trial. Growth takes time and let’s just assume a level of success kicks in. Sad thing is that as an entrepreneur, things no longer depend on you. Key word here is customer care. Clients may keep off your great business idea just because they can be treated better elsewhere.

There was drama earlier in the week when a celebrated media personality had an exchange with hotel service staff. Away from the drama, focus on the business perspective. First, did it have to go that far? Secondly, who is to blame? I have a big problem with the hospitality industry as a whole. Most of them have very poor customer care skills. Great ambience, good food but below average customer care. Theirs is an industry where you have to smile and adapt so quickly even if the customer smells like rotten eggs. Its business. The problem is, most the employees who serve the clients have no idea about the business as a whole. They are not trained to understand that they are the profit center of the business. No consequences on the bottom like. They think.

My heart goes to the owners of these businesses. After good set up and preparations, all the energy may go to waste just because someone has an attitude towards your clients. It’s unfair. Without good customer care, the products don’t matter especially in a competitive market where i can easily get better treatment next door. Unless you are a monopoly, yours is a life of submitting to the client. Trick is, you don’t need to beg. Simply understand the client’s needs and leave your ego at home, in your bag or just don’t show it.

The restaurant incident was unfortunate but these are common events. I do hope that the management learnt from it. Why? It may be a reflection of their service delivery. As the public judges the events, the management should be very thankful as learning from the incident may see an improvement on customer service. To entrepreneurs, yours is a tough job but as much as you want to spend a lot of money on machinery, branding and innovation, perhaps a proper budget for customer care services would help.