Putting The Customer First with Ope Wemi-Jones

Ope wemi Jones has over 20 years’ experience working with the company's top leaders. So far she has been able to build relationships and trust to gain cross-functional alignment and drive change to help organizations demystify the buzz words "Customer Service", "Customer Experience". She has worked with several organizations to create a service culture that sizzles with measurable returns on investments. From the gate to the board room, she takes care to integrate service into the core of a business.

Below is a summary of the show Putting The Customer First with Ope Wemi-Jones.

Ope says that putting the customer first is greatly impaired by the execution and the ability of organizations to put their customers first. She then advises that businesses try to design their businesses around the customers and design products based on what the customers want. She says if there is no customer, there will be no service and if there is no service, there will be no satisfaction. Once the customer and the service are merged, then customer satisfaction can be achieved. She adds that in order to treat the customer asking you need to have a drawn-out plan of how you want to serve the customers and you must also define the kind of customers your business is looking out for. When you know all these, it’ll definitely affect the kind of people you employ and the way the business operates.

Ope says service is more than handbills, it is more of how are the people responding to your business regardless of the size. The demand for your product is what determines the quality of your service. The simple way to build your customer base is by making your customers happy, for every happy customer you make is one automatic life referral.

When asked about handling cranky or rude customers, Ope says you just have to put on a smile, focus on the problem and calm the person. When they see your calm reaction to their mood they begin to realize that you actually care enough to handle their problem and quell their fears.

She advises that when choosing employees, you should look for people who love customers, who can be very polite in handling problems and finally someone that focus while delivering the service needed. She also talks about the importance of training customer service employees so you can improve the quality of service the customer gets to experience.

Answering to a question about deceptive advertising, Ope says businesses should not promise what they cannot deliver, don’t say it for the sake of saying because people are going to hold you to your word and once you don’t deliver, they lose their trust in you. She then goes ahead to answer questions from various callers about service delivery, picking calls from customers and many more.

Concluding, she says that a customer-focused company is set up to guide the organization in involving service culture in its operation strategy which is a key component to the success of any business.