Communication Skills

Why is it that so many organisations think that certain things should be perfectly obvious to their customers  and there is no need for them to explain? It’s no secret that the most successful companies genuinely put customer service at the heart of everything they do and will constantly review and update their policies, procedures and staff  training to ensure this is always the case.  Too many organisations are either not bothered or are clueless about the potential impact of their disinterest on their customers.

I was recently sent a database from a company I was working with, which included names, email addresses, company address, etc.  I looked briefly at this information with a member of the company and everything seemed in order.  When I reopened the file later on I was surprised to find that I didn’t have any telephone numbers.  This was really annoying and I spent the weekend trying to track down some of the numbers.  When I phoned the company at the first opportunity on Monday morning,  my question was “Should I have received any telephone numbers?”.  The member of staff sounded incredulous and  I was told I had indeed received them. “But I can’t see them I said” – “You just need to expand column L” came the reply.  Gritting my teeth I explained that I had expanded column L already, but there  weren’t any telephone numbers.  It turns out that column L marked “Customer Data 1” – was the telephone number with the first 0 missing.Grr!!

There were four main issues that arose from this encounter.