The customer service experience in this country is abysmal. As if living in this country doesn’t pose enough of an exhilarating challenge to your sanity, to live here successfully you must also possess advanced skills that help you stay calm in the event you have to make a purchase of a product or service from the horde of zombies manning their sales posts without getting bitten in the process; unless, of course, you are lucky enough to be famously rich or exotically foreign, giving you immunity from their wrath, as if good service to them would result in a suitcase of cash and a citizenship abroad as appreciation.
These aren’t your normal run-of-the-mill zombies too, these are ones who have “graduated,” are the yuppie type, clued into what’s hot and what’s not. That service is fast and responsive when their interest is piqued or you may well be a rock, asking for attention. How Bangladesh’s most impressive conglomerates and ambitious start-ups allow for such degradation in service or not address it properly is beyond my understanding.
My nationalist friends will interject at this point and remind me that this is a global problem, and I agree with it, somewhat, but when you live in the second worst city in the world and one of the bottom-ranking countries, I am pretty sure the standard of bad service takes a nosedive too, leaving us with a situation that would be unacceptable anywhere in the world, but at least elsewhere, they make a concerted effort to improve it, and if not, there are avenues through which redress can be achieved.
Contrary to popular libel, phone-based customer service isn’t really that bad in Bangladesh as much as it is abroad. It’s the opposite here. The in-person service is where the trouble spot lies. For example, I have had the divine pleasure of experiencing a 30-something cashier at Bangladesh’s largest shoe brand shop, who refused to serve me because I gave him a Tk1,000 note for a Tk150 purchase for my toddler, even though a peek into his till revealed he had enough change in it, but because it was closing time, and I suppose he had already balanced his till, he was too lazy to make an effort to be honourable and lied about not having change.
His method of refusal was curiously insolent, throwing back my bank note at reduced velocity a la Matrix, and asking if I possessed a plastic card to do the same. I relented. He continued on his phone, chatting to his friend, while I gave him the said card and he miss-swiped it and continued to tell me it didn’t work. He insisted on a different card, I insisted on him trying again. He huffed and puffed and tried again, prying on my thinning patience.
He finally got it right and handed the slip to me to be signed but dropped the pen he wanted me to sign with and grunted in disgust -- in having to endure my presence. I could have escalated the matter to the manager of the store but I neither had the patience nor the time to help this establishment improve. This was not an isolated event. This is one of many I have witnessed and encountered.
Lately, I have been relayed many encounters such as this from my friends who use words and phrases ranging from “insolent” to “rude” to “apathetic,” intimidating to aggravating, attitudes rivaling the Nazi superiority complex, selective amnesia, and, in one instance, I am told, stroke inducing. So, while not all establishments fail common courtesy, which itself is a national problem which I hope to address in a future column, it is widespread enough that a positive experience is an exception and not the norm.
This is a problem whose solutions are easy for any organisation interested in sincerely improving -- provided they have a command structure and man-power well educated in basic management skills. Unfortunately, in reality, the examples I am aware of are presumably from very well-structured organisations with a golden pool of management talent that are failing good standards. So, apparently, something is slipping through the cracks and it is my hope many of the top brass who might be reading this make it a point to pay extra attention to this and not just their own bottom line. Many countries in Bangladesh’s neighbourly range have already made big strides in this regard and we can too.
I am well aware that customer behaviour in Bangladesh towards those who serve them isn’t stellar either, and that’s also a big part of the problem, but as the great Harry Gordon Selfridge coined: “The customer is always right.”
Training must make it so that, in the face of obnoxious trolls, those serving are able to say: “We apologise for the inconvenience and we hope you can tell us how we can make it right.” It goes a long way in mitigating hostility and gaining trust, repute, and future loyalty when you do that. It is an area of commerce in Bangladesh crying for attention, waiting to be exploited to its full potential.