Trust & Customer Relations Management

Recently, the spirit of idleness lured me into Facebook. I went to ‘Facebook’ instead of ‘bookfacing’. I was scrolling down until I saw an advertisement for an appetising and well-garnished dish of snails.  The price was worth it, and I sent an order and got a reply instantly, asking me to pay before the order could be formally booked. I replied that I would rather pay on delivery, but she insisted that she would not even start preparing the snail dish unless the cash was seated coolly in her account. I asked her why she could not trust me to pay on delivery but wanted me to trust her by paying before delivery. She responded that she had never disappointed anybody before! The question of why customers should trust vendors but vendors should not trust customers has been a source of great concern to me, and this reminded me of an article I wrote for BusinessDay on October 22, 2013.  It goes thus:

Some time ago, I did a month-long series (4/6/03-24/6/03) on how we treat or maltreat customers in Nigeria. I started with this exchange between a customer and a staff member: Customer: ‘The customer is always right.’ Staff: ‘Yes, but we are the ones to determine if you are a customer!’ That staff probably never heard of the twin laws of customer relations. 1: The customer is always right. 2: Even if he is wrong, remember rule number 1. Strategically speaking, it is in the best interest of the organisation that the customer wins, even if it means rigging the contest in his favour. This is because, whenever the customer loses the contest, the organisation has lost that customer, who then becomes a ‘terrorist’ rather than an ‘apostle’ and broadcasts negative word-of-mouth everywhere.

I recalled this due to the recently celebrated customer service week. Some organisations sent in happy-customer-week SMS, but my only worry is that one of the banks that sent me the text will surely debit my account for the cost of the SMS! That was the bank that used to pay me N5 as interest on a savings account and then charged N10 for an SMS alert on the interest. The result was that the savings balance was continuously dwindling (rather than increasing) until I petitioned the MD!

 “The question of why customers should trust vendors but vendors should not trust customers has been a source of great concern to me.”

However, an issue that remains to be discussed is why customers are expected to trust vendors and not vice versa.  This is my recent experience with my supplier of Harvard Business Review. Last month, the staff brought the September edition, presented an invoice for 1 year and demanded payment.  I replied that based on my previous experiences, they would give a more concrete guarantee that they would fulfil their obligations. The only assurance he offered was ‘We will not fail this time.’ He later came with the October edition and again demanded my check, failing which they would collect the earlier edition, and I obliged them. When we had that transaction about 4 years ago, the company failed to fulfil its obligations.  In 2012, they also breached the contract, and most of my calls and messages were ignored. It was around June this year that the transaction for last year was concluded.

Now the issue is that a company I have continuously patronised for the past 3 years, which failed me twice and whose staff know my residential and office addresses, is not willing to leave just one copy of their journal with me. But they want me to pay them for 12 copies in advance. They do not trust that I will pay them, but they want me to trust them, despite two previous disappointments. It is the same with landlords, airlines, bus operators, and traders. They want us to pay upfront, but they don’t trust that we will pay later. And when they fail – as they usually do – they take it as normal and expect the customers to understand! Flights would depart 6 hours behind schedule only for their ill-trained hostesses to warn customers against smoking and phone calls but say very little about their own failures! We walk into the banks and deposit our hard-earned cash without hassles. However, when we want to withdraw the money, it gets complicated and most often, frustrating!

Trust is crucial in CRM, but it should be mutual. Organisations must also trust their customers, except those who have betrayed the trust. Treating every customer as a ‘criminal-in-waiting’ adversely affects the value which the organisations can derive from those customers, especially the discerning, enlightened ones.  Methinks that the FCCPC should intervene in this matter!

Ik Muo, PhD, Dept. of Business Admin, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye. 08033026625