Delighted? Or Satisfied?

Good question there. That is if you know how to differentiate between the two.

I was a part-time customer service officer at BHG departmental stores when I was having the long holiday after my ‘O’ Levels. I have faced many different kinds of customers before; especially working in a departmental store located in the central area expose me to the international level.

There are customers who are easily satisfied, delighted, and customers who just wants to get you into trouble. Of course, I have the honour to meet customers from all three categories.

Many customers were easily satisfied. All we need to do was to smile and try our best to help them. There was one particular customer who was delighted with our services. He had accidentally left his Blackberry phone at the cashier while making payment. The cashier had kindly handed the phone over to the customer service counter to report lost, and I happened to be in charge of the counter at that point of time. I followed the protocols of recording the item and paging for the owner, but there was no response. Then I decided to be a little bold and look into the phone for contacts that I can call. To my luck, there was a number of the owner’s father. I called and informed him that his son’s phone was with me and if it was possible for him to tell his son to collect it at the counter. When the owner of the phone came, he was delighted. He told me that there were so many important contacts in the phone and it was a relief to have found it. He offered to pay me a sum, which I kindly rejected, said that it was part of my job and it was the cashier who found the phone. He could not stop thanking me and wrote a compliment letter, attached his name card, and offered to treat the cashier and me to lunch.

From the above experience, I can tell that the customer is delighted because he found the service he received is worth to reward me with a sum and treat me to a lunch. He was so delighted he decided to ‘pay back’. That is delighting customers in my point of view since then. However, it changes after this lesson.

What I think now is not totally the opposite as before. Nevertheless, delighting customers can be of different ways. From what I personally think after the workshop, is that delighting customers comes with an element of surprise. It is when you catch the customer off-guard, giving them more than what they expect that there will be a chance for them to be delighted.

However, there are this group of customers who just wants to make your life difficult, probably because of a bad day or bad experience before. Let’s just not make me go into that – it will take eons to finish.

Working in the service sector will require good skills handling customers. They are the most important asset.

It is also important to remember that customer is not always right; we make the customer think that they are right.

I am a straight arrow. What about you?

Wondering what the title is all about? During workshop 7 on Corporate Politics, we were supposed to do a small test on political tendencies. It turned out that there were one or two of us who were company politicians and survivalist, while the rest were straight arrows like me. By ‘the rest’, I mean about three of us (mostly girls) as there were only six students in that make-up workshop. Sad much?

Others would not perceive a straight arrow as being an office politician. A Straight Arrow believes fundamentally that most people are honest, hard working, and trustworthy. A Straight Arrow’s favourite career advancement strategy is to display job competence. However, we all know that it is not that easy.

What I have learnt in Corporate Politics taught me that the ‘real world’ is not all nice and fairytale like, well, at least it is not as perfect as I thought it was. I used to think that everyone would be honest with each other and that if you are nice to someone, your kindness will be repaid. So far, for all the part-time and volunteering work I have been involved, almost everyone was nice and helpful to me. Almost. Apparently, that is only true when you are of no threat to anyone’s salary. In the real-real world, no such luck.

In this topic, the most basic that I have learnt is to make as many people like you as possible. That includes (and especially) your boss.

There is also a scary list of familiar acts by people who play politics in the office. There are people who backstabs in front of the boss, but act as your best of friends in front of everyone else. Then there is this group of people who gets you into deep trouble simply just because their hobby is to gossip. A tutor used to teach me from her experience, the meaning of CYA – cover your *buttocks*, which I find is more than true.

As I have said, I have had some almost-real-world experience. Some of the behaviours of corporate politicians, mentioned in the notes and during the workshop, actually apply in some of my experience. The result of the test for political tendency was also quite true for me. I am almost, always the victim of the politics.

This lesson is definitely beneficial for me. I think I will need to learn to trust myself more than trusting others. Perhaps learn about one’s personality, backgrounds and goals before making good friends with her. That way, I may not be backstabbed as much.

I just have so much more to learn about this topic.