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The State Of Customer (Dis) Service in GHANA | The Stores, Banks & the Telecom Companies

Ghana-Accra Mall
Ghana-Accra Mall

Yesterday, I had a problem with my personal website. I had signed up with a host company in the US and was getting charged monthly on my Visa card. My website was down so I skype-called the customer hotline number.

After a couple of minutes going through the automated voice system, I finally spoke to customer rep and told him about my problem. It took 2 minutes to fix the problem and my site was up and running. I was so stunned at how fast he fixed the problem; I actually stumbled in hanging up the call.

I have been back living in Ghana for the past 3 years and I am not used to that kind of customer service. I had totally forgotten how efficient the customer service was in developed countries.

Go ask anybody about customer service in Ghana. Go on, ask. I’ll wait…..

Great. If you managed to ask a couple of people in Ghana about the state of customer service in Ghana, you’ll probably get descriptions like this:

Bad. Awful. Slow. Rude. Terrible.

Those are just a couple of adjectives used to describe how people feel about customer service.

Seriously, the state of customer service Ghana is downright pathetic. I have walked into many stores where all the attendants do is look at you for a second and then their eyes go back to their smartphones. Some attendants actually come over and ask if they can help. But the attitude with how they ask if they can help is so off-putting, you just reply in the negative.

Sometimes, it seems that employees are annoyed when you walk into their store.

From mobile phone companies to banks to shopping malls, people just don’t know how to give proper customer service. It’s like they haven’t gone through ANY training at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t, to be honest.

I once went to a bank to open an account. Once I was in the bank, nobody bothered to come over and assist me. When I did finally manage to speak to someone and opened the account, it took about 3 months before they set up my internet banking. Hell, they didn’t even send me my cheque book during that time period. Not even an ATM card.

All in all, I closed that account down and signed up with another bank. Fast forward and now my current bank has also started being terrible with service delivery and so I just signed up with a third bank pondering if I should close down the second bank account.

Don’t get me started on my home internet and mobile phone carrier. Sometimes I feel my money might as well be falling into an abandoned well than going into the hands of some of these mobile carriers. They’re all slow. They don’t do follow ups when you tell them your problem. It’s a nightmare.

It’s not that hard to provide good customer service. Here’s a few tips I just came up with for better customer service:

*Smile: It doen’t matter how crappy your day has been or if you’re not being paid enough. When a customer walks in, you have to be welcoming. No one wants to walk into a store and feel like they’re walking into a funeral wake where everything is glum. Even if you have to fake that smile. Do it. Believe me, it helps.

*Open Conversation: Be chatty. Be inquisitive. Make me want to buy something. I might be browsing but you never know, I might have my eye on something in the store and you being friendly might actually nudge me into buying that item.

*Know Your Stuff: I’m an IT guy. I know electronics up and down. I do my research whenever I’m making a new purchase. When I walk into your store and ask about something and you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m walking out of that store and never coming back again. And that’s potential money you just lost.

* Give A Sh*t About My Problem: When I have a complaint about something, could you actually look into it. There’s been so many times where I’ve gotten the run around where I’m told that my problem will be fixed soon, only for that problem to linger on. Could you actually go and check to see what my complaint is about and stop giving me a generic answer. Seriously, it’s off putting and fricking annoying.

I have never worked in a store where items are sold but I have worked in places where I was at a front desk. My former manager gave me some great advice one time. She told that I’m a great worker but it would help if I smiled more and was more friendly to people. I did what she asked and it helped. People seemed more open and I had a lot of great friendly conversations.

So how we do fix customer service in Ghana? Maybe a bit more training and a little bit of attitude adjustment. If some guy, almost 5,000 miles away, can fix my problem in 5 minutes and you can’t do it in 24 hours even when I’m in close proximity, then we have a major problem.

A company that offers great customer service in this country is almost assured of customers coming in everyday to do business with them.

Until that happens, I guess I’m going to keep walking into stores with zombie employees not selling me anything.



READ ALSO: Refused A UK Visa? CLICK HERE FOR HELP

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