A Customer is King

Making service deliverly a reality The saying that a customer is King has been rehearsed by generation after generation and surprisingly sometimes it bears no fruits. If this was a country that knew nothing about monarchies then the point would be self explanatory because one would conclude that people know nothing about kings and how they are treated. However, this is not the case because even a country that has never had a monarchy has literate people who have read about kings. Even children’s fairly tales usually had a story or two about a king. Therefore to hit the nail on the head, a customer being a king means that he should be someone revered and given the best service there is on offer. That’s mainly the reason why a shop keeper will wake up very early every day with expectation of customers to serve. However, the way the customer is treated is usually in contradiction with the real the saying that a customer is king. This is also witnessed in other domains. We can take a clear example where one enters an office and has to wait for the receptionist who is busy chatting with some friend via internet. In normal circumstances a customer is supposed to be waited for and not vice versa. It is not surprising for one to enter a shop and has to wait for the attendant to first complete some phone or other gossip. It gets even worse when the attendant looks at you with dagger eyes like you are interrupting the most pressing operation there has ever been. It’s not surprising because the people who mistreat customers are usually hired workers or the owner’s relatives who might not care what the company’s vision might be about. On the other hand poor customer service could probably be attributed to lack of serious competition since most companies are still a monopoly. Hopefully since we are striding towards the East African community, there will soon be a ‘threat’ that will teach Rwandans to adapt to the customer is king attitude or risk losing the already frustrated ones. It’s weird that even the few people who try to show some signs of good customer service are selective basing on one’s appearance (this might not be limited to Rwandans though). Unfortunately, the vice of customer negligence is affecting the young generation who are brought up in such an unfriendly environment. And this can be supported by a recent interview by Rwandair for new staff. Among the questions was one related to how one can handle a customer. To my dismay, some of didn’t even know the real definition of a customer. Could this be that they have never experienced real customer care? More to that when we say that a customer is a king some people care less saying I need no customer since I have no company, shop, restaurant etc forgetting that as long as we live we need each other in one way or another and in all aspects of life because no man is an Island. Hopefully, the Rwanda Development Agency’s national customer care campaign will change matters for the better. Ends