Again, customer service
We had arrived at a private school in Abuja to see the Principal, my spouse and I and we were offered seats by a battery of secretaries all prim and proper. We sat and sat and sat and sat and not one of the five secretaries said anything to us both after sitting us down. After twenty five minutes, I could not take it anymore and then asked if we had come to their school to play. Mark you, no one gave us anything like a visitor’s form or even said a word to us. It was only after I inquired that they began to inform us that the Principal was at a function within the school premises and they would send someone to inform her about our presence. Merde! I was very upset. Unbelievable! We had been kept waiting for so long and were spoken to only when we began to complain.
Customer service continues to be our Achilles’ heel as a nation and there are many issues revolving around this. Arriving at a service area always makes me nervous, a hotel reception, an office reception, an airport counter, ticketing area and general service areas which are tied to tourism and hospitality, international relationships and general work ethics.
I get really mad when I arrive the reception of any one of these establishments to find a gum chewing receptionist with no skills whatsoever. In England a huge place like the train stations have information centres where you can ask questions. At most airports back home those manning a lot of the desks have no information whatsoever about a simple question like why your flight is delayed. Even those who have the answers to “why” do not often have the answers to “when” the flight will actually take-off. I once arrived at the airport for a flight two hours ahead and still missed the flight. I am not one for being late for flights. I often arrive very early because I do not like to rush. I like the leisure of airport lounges. I like to see old friends and meet new ones. I like to read a magazine, catch up on my readings. I like to people-watch, a favourite past time. So I went into the lounge with time on my hands. No, you would never believe what happened. The plane took off ahead of its scheduled departure. There were no announcements to this effect. It would have been hilarious if it was not so annoying. I could not believe it. From one counter to another, I could not find anyone to hold accountable. Again a failure of one of Nigeria’s institutions, a Nigerian commercial airline. A customer service failure.
Something has to be wrong with a group that cannot offer simple courtesies. “Oh we are flying out 30 minutes ahead of schedule because of so and so”. No one said a word. In the end, I missed a crucial meeting in Lagos and it was an uphill task getting on another flight to make my trip. One would have thought that after failing to provide satisfactory service, the airline will pacify me by arranging another flight without hassle, apologize and maybe give a customer service failure bonus i.e. free lunch at the airport, 20% off your next ticket and other such customer satisfaction methods. Instead I was struggling with those who were slated for the next flight to get on board. The frustration cannot be described. Time wasted cannot be quantified. Businesses lost cannot be recouped. It’s a nightmare!
Add this to the issue of our checks at some of our airports, a topic that I have written on many times on this page. Please provide a check, don’t ask me what I brought back from England for you and your family. Kindly simply do your work. Let’s keep it official.
Some of the lounges at our airports make me truly sad. Most lounges abroad even the ones that are for economy passengers provide you something for sore eyes. There is beauty, aesthetics and pleasant shopkeepers or information providers. In some conveniences, at some Nigerian airports you have to keep requesting for something as simple as tissue paper. The major lounges are a marketplace. It’s important to have some pleasure in whatever lounge you are seated at our airports and also get the opportunity to work on your laptop.
What about paying lounges where they show Nigerian movies that are unpleasant, with poor audio visual quality and poor content? What about attendants at paying lounges where they don’t even have public address systems to let you know when your flight departs? What about voices on the public address system announcing your take-off time in their local languages instead of English? What about airport ground staff who are uninterested in the passengers? This is 2016 and we can change can’t we?
No nation survives without good customer experience in all ramifications. Let us try to make things better for our customers. Money is not easy to come by. And average Nigerians work very hard.
Selah!
Eugenia Abu