Ev Lyn
From the 3rd of October till the 7th, Jumia Travel and the rest of the world celebrated Customer Care week and this means we bring you tips and experiences by people including our very own team, that has dealt with thousands of different customers and hotels through the course of our business.
Customer care is defined as the art of looking after customers and ensuring their satisfaction with one’s business and its goods or services. Jumia Travel, being an online based business with over 820 hotel partners all over Uganda, our biggest goal is to ensure that service delivery is always on a timely and customer respectful manner that will keep our clients happy.
How then does a business build its customer care standards to suit its business?
Reception/ Foyer
The first part of your company that people will see is the reception, it being the welcoming area for your customers. You have to make sure your reception is warm and inviting to clients and other business partners you deal with. This is very important especially if you are operating a hotel; the professionalism at the reception shows future residents a glimpse of what they will get when they book their rooms.
Front Desk Service
Away from how your reception looks like, the people that receive your clients will always leave a lasting impression on them. This starts with the security officer, the concierge to the front desk manager. Are they polite, patient and understanding with the customers or always too busy and unprofessional to the clients? This makes it easy for clients to run to your competitors without a second thought.
Professionalism Is Key
It is of utmost importance to hire people that know what they are doing in your business; people who will understand that whether they like it or not, the customer’s needs come before everything else around them. Staff that do their job to a satisfactory point and make the client happy give your business that extra spark.
Personalised Services
Is your business customer friendly? Do you have before or after services that are offered to your clients, or when done with them you run off to the next one without ascertaining if they were pleased with the services they received? Every client you have is unique in their way so make sure to get personal with them, to understand their experiences with your business.
Unique Delivery
Every business has that something unique in their brand delivery that makes them stand out; what is yours? Whatever makes the company unique always revolves around your company goals and the target market, the moment you polish it out to attract clients you have to keep it going for the better.
Get Experimental
Sometimes clients get bored with the same exact thing they keep seeing or receiving in your business, but this does not mean you have to discard that completely without experimenting on how many customers would prefer change and which ones would not. Experiment with your service delivery strategies whenever you can because this teaches you a lot about the clientele you have.
Interaction
Whenever the chance avails itself, make sure you interact with your clients to see how their experiences are with your services. Pay attention to their conversations even if they are not talking to you or their behaviour around some of your staff.
Availability
Businesses are built on customer awareness and the hard work of its staff, but most of the time customers have queries and a little assistance with some of the services offered. It’s important to have a team available to offer assistance whenever possible to your clients.
Credit: travel.jumia.com
