The missus, after authoring a book on her father, the late and great Sukyatno Nugroho, has moved on and one of the things she’s got up to – which Unspun thinks is a good idea – is a blog on customer service, one of the passions she has.
Customer service is one of the few things in life that unite us all. Often it is bad customer service that we are exposed to. Especially in Indonesia where owners of restaurants can happily splash ostentatiously on decor, even a chef but spoil it all with waiters and waitresses that make you tear your hair out and spoil the whole experience. Or have your shopping experience ruined by a shop assistant that can’t seem to care the flying duck whether you buy the shop’s stuff or not.
Well, there’s now somewhere you can read of such experiences and find a lighting rod for your frustrations. Its at Felicia Nugroho: Decoding Customer Service.
Now there’s a channel to get back at those who inflict bad service on us and reward the few who do it well and give us extreme pleasure, all the more because of the scarcity o good customer service.
Here’s the latest posting:
“Cheerfulness” – a criteria to recruit, promote and survive
The biggest issue facing the customer service industry is high employees turnover. Lack of motivation, low level of job commitment and attitude towards the job itself, are the cause of high staff turnover. Very often staff view their job as “it’s just a job” or a “stepping stone until they find a better one” or “unglamorous” or even “hopeless”.
However, they are not entirely responsible for having such low expectation of the job. Businesses play a major role in creating a working environment that is conducive to happy and highly motivated staff, instead of only focusing on reaching sales target and bottomline. After all, having happy and motivated staff working in your business translate to more happy customers, hence higher sales. It’s a win-win.
So how do you create a working environment where staff are happy to work in?
Let’s take a look how Pret a Manger does it.
Here’s one on a restaurant in jakarta:
True Blue
So, what constitutes a ‘good’ customer service, really?
In the context of a restaurant, that would be:
- good food – tastes just right on your tastebuds
- nice ambiance – comfortable and clean with pleasant décor, with nice music playing in the background
- pleasant and helpful staff – friendly and welcoming, always there ready to assist when you need them without standing over your shoulder, knowledgable about the products, can answer your questions and even more, can give you recommendations
- good price – this what determines whether or not a product or a service is of a good value
When you live in a town where every corner is packed with eating places; big or small, to suit a wide range of budget, to suit different tastes …. But yet it is always a ‘hit-and-miss’ experience when it comes to finding a good place to eat ie. a restaurant that constitutes all of the above elements.
So when my husband and I went to Blue Elephant for the first time a week ago, we were pleasantly surprised.
Unspun 
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