- CSS Barnawa
CCD: Hope Samuel, you are the Customer Service Supervisor (CSS) for Barnawa Area Office, tell us about your job.
HS: One of our most important mandates is to delight our customers; we make them happy, we try as much as we can to follow up their complaints within the shortest possible time. Resolving their issues is another way of making them happy, the more you make them happy, they more we receive a favourable response from them.
CCD: Complaints resolution seems to be one of your most important roles.
HS: Not exactly, we also carry out some sensitization programmes with the aim of educating them on varied issues, some of which are basic and would not require them to come to the office a lay a complaint.
There is also sensitization on what the company is all about to enable them to appreciate some of the challenges we are facing and what their obligations are to the company.
Other areas we enlighten them on are vandalism and energy theft. For instance, a customer who has compromised his meter will still come and lay complaint of irregular supply. They need to be aware that meter bypass is crime before they will know that they don't have any moral standing once they compromise the process.
Some of our customers also do not know that what we distribute is dependent on what we get from TCN. This and more are some of the issues that the customer is educated on.
CCD: What then are the most frequent complaints you receive based on experience?
HS: In Barnawa, the most frequent complaints are metering issues. They will complain of "blank meter" and that their meter is "running fast".
For those complaining about their meter "running fast", we send our team to investigate only to find out that the meters are working fine.
In some of the case of "meter running", from experience, it has been found to be associated with wrong internal wiring. The meter will capture this in its reading thereby making the units run fast.
Use of substandard wires too can cause the meter to capture it in its reading; so, we educate them on the dangers of using substandard materials for wiring and advise them to hire the services of a qualified technician to have a normal reading.
CCD: In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of being a customer care representative?
HS: One of the most common difficulties we experience is the case of transferred aggression. This is when a customer is angry from home and will pass it to a Customer Representative; but we still handle them professionally.
Firstly, we handle the customer in a cautious manner; we show empathy by putting ourselves in the customer's shoes, listening to the customer by making him/her know that you would have reacted the same way.
We have a case where a customer slapped a metering staff and the company is currently investigating it.
CCD: Teamwork is one of the company's core values; do you consider yourself a team player?
HS: Yes, I am a team player because we are all gifted with varied talents therefore you cannot stand alone and must depend on others to achieve a great thing.
Through the contributions of others, viable solutions to many problems have been reached which would have been a difficult thing to achieve.
Being a leader of a team, I listen to people that are reporting to me, I listen to what they have to say and if they have a superior point that will even make us progress, I quickly adopt it and sometimes the leader takes the glory without anybody knowing that it was a team work.
As a leader, if you are doing well, it invariably means your team is doing well, so team spirit is the ultimate.
CCD: Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve our relationship with customers?
HS: Like I said earlier, sensitization is very key because when I was in Doka I did it and even till now I think most of the customers are still requesting for it.
Fora like that provide opportunity for a two-way communication; whereby customers are educated and informed about our efforts/challenges while listening to them too to enable us to improve on our service delivery.
So, I will suggest we organize more Customer Consultative fora. The one I organized then, really made a lot of impact on customers because the previous month they did better with 30% increase in cash collections.
Some of the issues we covered bordered on the need to pay for electricity and harping on the fact that electricity is not for free, because most of them believe that it is from the government, "wutan Gwamnati ne ba zan biya ba" meaning " electricity is provided by the government, we won't pay for it".
But by the time you keep engaging them, they will begin to understand that this business is now being privately run, that private individuals invested money with the expectation to have returns on their investments.
Sadly, if you look at the attitude of management towards customer care you would be disappointed. Take a look at the budget even the new STRIVE Project; you would not see anything tangible concerning customer care.
Honestly, I feel differently about this approach; customer care should be given some priority because we project the company's brand as the front staff, but it seems nobody sees it that way.
CCD: What areas do you want management to address?
HS: They are doing well but can do more for Customer Care Unit (CCU). They should not just neglect the Unit. We see them developing strategies without any plan for CCU.
Although, with the coming of the Customer Care Unit, I will say it is a commendable move.
They should see customer care as a money generating part of the business because we delight our customers
It is sad that nobody is seeing the efforts we are making, all they see is cash collections, Sales Reps, Supervisors, nobody is talking about Customer Care
There is no form of encouragement for staff of CCU, even in award recognition Customer Care is not included. They should include and encourage Customer Care Unit in whatever they are doing.
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