KYC stands for Know Your Customer. Knowing details about our customer well is most important for sustainability of any business. A business can’t run independently. When we talk about a business we need to care for our customers who help us run it well. The profit or loss we make in any business is directly dependent on the happiness quotient of its customers. The quotient is higher when service is better.
You might have a big degree in business management from a reputed institute or have great sales & marketing skills. But there is no guarantee it will make you a successful business person when that knowledge is only bookish. We need something more here. The necessary skills can be taught and improved with experiential learning. For all this to become a reality one need to have the natural instinct, learning appetite and high orientation towards service. Yes, i mean customer service.
We need to understand who is our customer first before we can provide the right service? So, who do you think your customer to be? Is it any specific person or a group of people? It’s all we do business with. When you provide service to a company under certain contract with your employer, you need to treat everybody employed with that company as your customer. Forget what you read in books but share with me all you’re learning from experience. I don’t say all in a book to be wrong or exaggerated data. It could have great value but will be of no use unless we experience that in practice. So, where can we have experiential learning before we jump into a full time job that needs such skills?
I can tell about my personal experience here. Do you have a friend running a restaurant or a friend running an office stationery store? Spend some time with them at work without any interference. Observe how they talk to the customer. I believe most of us use mobile phones and credit cards. We often feel the need to interact with customer care representatives regarding certain services either over phone or via email. We can learn from them how they talk/write to us. Observe people at work, on TV and at public places. If you ever notice a difficult to deal with situation, make note of it. Analyse that well later how you dealt with that. Prepare case studies from your learning if required for further analysis. These are just few examples and you can find many more with experience. Time management and right communication are most important in customer service.
What is this article about? Why do we need a KYC Campaign? I have observed companies doing that to familiarize their employees with their customer before they are inducted to customer projects. In case of serving multiple customers under one roof they build separate cubicles to provide hassle-free service. HR people distribute employee handbooks after induction and often project guideline documents specific to clients. Why is that so important when we are getting paid for work and we are supposed to do the work right? Rookies often question that. What is the need of all such training and materials that are unrelated to their work? That’s not exactly true as nobody’s work is independent of another in a team. We interact with many at workplace for which soft skills are necessary. Right code of conduct and ethics is a mandatory requirement everywhere.
In global work environments where people work together sitting at different locations, it’s quite possible for people to forget certain basics. In busy work environment they sometimes forget their customer and treat everybody as their colleague. Because of this their natural behaviour gets reflected at work in their communication. Without any wrong intention they at times talk and write to the customer in a manner never expected of them. It’s a big mistake and can bitter your relationship with the customer. Certain skills can be cultivated through learning and experience. For this very same reason often junior employees are not allowed direct communication with the client until they have some sound experience and understand internal processes in the company.
Let’s have an introspection how we behave at work. We often get irritated during a conversation. We don’t accept others viewpoints and always try to prove ourselves right because of ego. It’s well understood with a fresher and other juniors but what if we notice that among seniors. Management often fire employees without giving any particular reason in the fear of losing their customer sooner or later. If they want to retain such people and give them more opportunity to learn and grow, they sometimes conduct on the job soft skill training programs and at times shift people to other projects for a period on need basis. It’s not always because of lack of technical skills or competence.
Basics need to be learnt with self-interest and not by forced training. For example, we should never argue unnecessarily with the customer. If you have a valid point to prove present that politely. If your customer still doesn’t agree with you, keep yourself quiet and give that a second thought but don’t argue. Always wear a smile in your face but don’t laugh at others misery. There is substantial difference between a smile and laughter. The more pleasant we are the better we can handle difficult situations. Never complain against the customer, it’s a strict ‘NO’ for all.
Never give false information if you can’t provide certain service. It could be because of either your lack of unawareness of the same or unavailability of the service with you. Serve exactly what is asked and in case of unavailability of the same tell the truth and ask for more time if permissible. In case they are in a hurry explain about similar alternate service if available with you but never try to convince them by hook or crook. It’s always their choice and bear in mind not to even think about them as fools who can be prompted to act as you like. If you do that you are bound to lose the customer sooner or later.
Share more knowledge with me by your comments and i will address your queries (if any).
