ICSP to name and shame public, private entities offering poor customer service

Yvonne Ohui Mccarthy, President of the Institute of Customer Service Professionals (ICSP)

Institute of Customer Service Professionals (ICSP) is to disclose names of all public and private entities who provide poor customer service to clients.

President of the Institute, Yvonne Ohui Mccarthy, said the move forms part of a radical approach to dealing with Ghana's "sick customer service experience".

Speaking of JoyBusiness at the launch of the Customer Service Excellence Awards scheduled for 2018, Yvonne Ohui Mccarthy, said poor customer service experience in Ghana continues to affect foreign investments in the country.

According to her, the very first experience that foreign investors have with Ghanaian businesses is hinged on the quality of customer service engagement which, she argues, is always poor.

So far, Ghana has no existing regulatory body which streamlines customer service in the country. But the ICPS believes deeper private sector engagement could get things working the right direction.

"Customer service here in Ghana is very sick. There is a lot that needs to be done to address this issue. We can't monetize the effects of poor customer service here in Ghana but I must say that when you have foreign investors experience poor customer service in the very first point of call, you must expect them to make a second decision on whether or not they want to explore business opportunities in the country," she revealed to JoyBusiness.

Customer Service Index

The Ghana Customer Service Index (GCSI) is a yearly report which would published in the first week of October. The index would provide an insight into the state of customer service in Ghana.

The report would initially focus on 8 key sectors. They are financial institutions, utilities, telecommunications, hospitality, healthcare, retail food and non-food, public institutions and online businesses. GCSI would use a 3-component approach; research, traditional surveys (face to face, telephone and written questionnaires) and online surveys as a basis to measure the performance of businesses vis-à-vis their customer relations.

The Index will also determine the “degree of satisfaction” of customers who patronize the services of companies – both private and public.

Customers would be asked to rate their experience of dealing with the selected sectors and each customer can rate only one organization per sector. Each customer can complete the survey for up to 8 different sectors.

The metrics and indicative areas would reflect the priorities customers have identified as the most important attribute of customer experience. Customers would rate the sectors and some organizations on a scale of 1-10 using the following metrics: Look and feel, competence, professionalism, ease of doing business, processes and procedure, customer-focused innovations, staff engagement, feedback and complaint.

The index scores would be expressed as a number out of 100. The GCSI for each chosen organization is the average of all its customer satisfaction score multiplied by 10.

The sector score will be calculated by using the mean average of all responses for that sector multiplied by 10.

Sectors would then be compared according to the scores and recommendations would be made as to how things can be improved going forward.

Specific sectors who score reveal interesting or worrying trends would also be captured in the report.