Customer service: The icing on your business cake

Carolyn Baytion-Sunaryo Jakarta

Customer service is like the icing on the cake. When a customer decides to buy a cake, she chooses whether it's chocolate, mango or black forest. When she eats the cake, the enjoyment does not come from the cake alone but comes from the icing too, which gives the customer deeper satisfaction.

So when a customer comes back to buy the cake again, she looks for the same cake but does not mention anything about the icing which contributed to her enjoyment. But she expects exactly the same cake and if the icing is not there, she won't enjoy the cake and will be disappointed.

Every business needs an "icing on the cake" to be able to compete amid Indonesia's ever increasing competition. As mentioned earlier, the "icing on the cake" I am referring to here is customer service.

Customer service is often associated with department stores, hotels and restaurants. But even in these establishments, customer service is poorly practiced.

In Jakarta alone, there are now 80 shopping centers and another 20 shopping centers will soon be opened. Since in these shopping centers department stores and specialty stores abound, customer service has improved.

Also, for many new retailers the only way by which they can compete in the market is by establishing a good relationship with their customers. They know very well that so much money has been invested in advertising but to no avail. Consumers are already immune to catchy advertising slogans and turn off at ads on television and in the print media.

Shell is a new entrant into the market. Its only weapon is customer service so as to be able to differentiate itself amid the ubiquitous presence of Pertamina. It distinguishes itself by having very clean gas stations, helpful attendants and receipts that are automatically printed out as soon as the gas tanks are filled.

Hypermarkets are the in thing nowadays. They offer reasonable prices in convenient locations and at the same time offer a vast range of products from fresh food to electronic goods. Bisnis Indonesia reported that as of July 29, 2005, there were a total of 52 existing and soon to be opened hypermarkets all over Indonesia. In Greater Jakarta alone, there are 31 hypermarkets.

So how can smaller food retailers compete?

The answer is better customer service. I myself shop in these hypermarkets for the comprehensive range of goods they offer, but I also patronize smaller stores for their customer service, where shop attendants recognize me by my face or name. I am glad there are so many of these stores now in Jakarta. Even small fruit stores are a pleasure to shop in because of their helpful and knowledgeable attendants.

At Al Fresh, now renamed All Fresh, the store attendants will select and weigh the fruit for you. They tell you whether a certain kind of orange is sweet or sweet and sour. They also pack your purchases and, if you like, bring the bags to your car. They can even peel your pineapples at no extra charge.

Another good example of how customer service can differentiate your business from all the others is Mirota in Yogyakarta. Mirota is a furniture shop that offers antique and modern teak furniture. It also offers batiks and knick-knacks from all over Indonesia, and even different types of candy from the country's smaller cities. My husband and I recently visited the place after an absence of more than a year, and the store attendant still managed to remember our names.

They are willing to assist customers in whatever way they can; providing clean restrooms, and a cafe for husbands waiting for their wives. Although the cafe is not available all the time and they are slow to process payments, I am still willing to go back time after time on account of the helpful attitude of the store attendants, those who deliver the furniture and the owner himself.

These establishments illustrate how customer service can create customer loyalty in highly competitive sectors

These retailers belong to an industry where the profit margin is not very large and the level of education of employees is not high. But these organizations can motivate their employees to do their best to assist their customers.

Indonesians by nature are friendly people but are also shy. There is always a hesitancy to offer help. It is all the more important then to stress to our employees that it is all right to help other people. Our companies exist to satisfy whatever needs and wants customers have. That's why customers visit stores in the first place.

Wanting to help other people is the very essence of customer service. The cakes that we sell wouldn't be complete if they were not covered with the "icing".

The writer is a marketing lecturer at GS FAME Institute of Business, Jakarta.