Service delivery, poor customer care in Nigeria, by Lilian Mabeek

Entrepreneurs in Nigeria are thriving against odds of economic hardship. Business owners in Nigeria set the motion for risk with the target to flourish or make profit. An entrepreneur is an individual who takes the risk to start their own business based on an idea they have or a product they have created while assuming most of the risks and reaping most of the rewards of the business.

An adventurer identifies a problem and takes steps to create a solution for the teeming consumers or buyers.

Such effort is the reward for the risk when members of the public are convinced into buying the solution created by the adventurer.

I am concerned about service delivery, particularly customer care in Nigeria. You can agree with me that a business owner takes all the risks and knows how to create a customer friendly relationship in order to sustain patronage, but often times the attendants or stewards of the business do not share the same sustainability acumen with the promoter of the business, thereby the business never gets to its lifeline before it collapses or wrecks.

There are plethora of examples to deduce from. Restaurant business is a case to discuss. Restaurant owners set out to cook sumptuous meals for the public, but they default in little comforts that provide ancillary alternatives to the primary business. There are restaurants with ill maintained restrooms, cobweb littering walls, shabby tableware and infected finger nails. How can this type of service delivery outlive the entrepreneur? It is only a matter of time before customers cease patronising an uncomfortable restaurant with the enumerated limitations.

Sometime ago, I entered a supermarket and I was greeted by a monstrous rat running freely on the tiles in the glare of customers in the the afternoon. Many customers will be terrified to find a giant rat in a supermarket and the perception of the customers would be that the rat may find its way to edibles in the store or shelves, mixing their poisons into uncovered liquid caps, etc. The expectation of a customer would be that every supermarket is fumigated and safe and quality policy should never be compromised. Recklessness as such mentioned above will clearly make business owners lose their patronage.

Automobile workshop is not left out. There are heightened complaints against motor workshops in areas of fixing substandard parts other than what was bargained for or quoted as damaged. Mechanics today make quotations for parts that are functional, claiming that the parts are bad, just for the purpose of extorting money by tricks. Some mechanics even steal parts that are superior in a car and replace it with inferior quality ones, all in a bid to collect more money from the car owner. Car repairers are known to damage a vehicle beyond how it was gotten from the owner. Some of these behaviours are the reasons entrepreneurs do not get to their desired goals at the initial creation of the business.

Customer service delivery should be concerned with the consumers satisfaction before profit making and cashing out. The cashing out would be momentary if the desired expectation of the consumers are not met.

. Lilian Mabeek is a writing enthusiast who enjoys to captivate her readers with everyday happenings or experiences as it best soothes each person, having similar and peculiar reactions and interaction with daily life occurrences. As an inspirational writer focused on indelible prints of positivity of the minds on anyone reading a line or pages as it were, she prefers not to delve into negative stories or publications, but rather intentionally purges the minds of readers to awaken to a beautiful world where endless joy is found and possibilities exist. For Mabeek, her purpose is to bring peaceful memories, coexistence and friendliness to the mind of anyone who reads her daily digest. You can describe her choice of expression as a daily English usage for better comprehension among readers of all educational qualifications. Mabeek’s passion for writing was borne out of ensuring that anyone reading any publication will find pleasure, humour, laughter and an appreciation of whatever is being written about, but ultimately avert stress, anxiety, depression and any form of life challenge. As a social commentator and public relations consultant, for her the pen is a tool to the heart of the society, bringing public enlightenment that it pays to focus on positive narratives and creating a greater image for Nigeria.