CUSTOMER FIRST

During my 3 yrs stint at my work I have been close to life.Interacting with people was my job and in this process everyday I used to come across poeple of diffrent ages,diffrent backgrounds,diffrent culture and diffrent nature.Some were gentle,some were polite,some rude,some irate,some courteous,some sophisticated,some rustic,some eversmiling and so many of them that kept me wondering that how diverse humans are.


In a service sector customers are the insignia and from the very first day were trained in customers first to attain a paragon of customer satisfaction.We were supposed to be extremely polite and courteous with a helpful humane touch.Sporting a 'how can I help you?' grin all the time was a must.Everyday we had a morning meeting when all the employees gathered in the backoffice for 10 minutes to discuss the actionables for the day.It consisted of a verbose lecture by our boss on targets not being met and the omnipresent 'CUSTOMER SATISFACTION'.


'Professionals should behave the way they should and not the way they like' was his favorite one liner which we were sick of hearing.His soporific lectures did nothing good but robbed us of our zeal with which otherwise we could have started our day.At times the doses beacme so heavy that we colleagues often discussed within ourselves that are we employees of a reputed organisation or mere servants of the masses.


Though this infliction initially compelled us to behave in a way we were asked to,it was not long before that things started going haywire.Under the immense pressure we often forgot that customer is always right and went a far too ahead at times to prove our point right.

Interacting with 1000-1200 customers daily we had no time to breathe and very soon the archetypal lectures and training sessions were obliterated.The grin was replaced by usual grimace.

The final contigency was that vociferous arguments,blatant gestures,implacable grumbles were regular occurance at the bank.

Be it the impatient nature of the obstreperous customers who werent ready to wait for their turn to be served or some foolish urge of their's which for the bank was impossible to entertain.....the result was cacophonous heated discussions.


Whenever such an incident occured other employees spurted in support of the involved colleague making the concerned customer feel so puny and vanquished that he never dared to say a word in future.The placard with 'we care' hung mokingly on the wall.

Its not that we didnot care.We cared but only for people who were deserved to be cared.We never cared for bumptious,rude people who had this notion that employees of a service sector were their own servants.

Care.love,respect,kindness all are very abstract terms but one thing thats sure about these terms is that they can neither be commanded nor being forced or imposed.They have to be earned and no training and lecture is required for extending these qualities to a person who deserves.