Ever had the feeling “that’s three hours I won’t get back” after having to resolve some or other issue through a call centre? Or become peeved because the Pick n Pay cashier is pointedly ignoring you while she stands around dealing with some other issue, but can’t be bothered to apologise for the delay?
Or walked into a bank to collect a credit card to discover there are only two tellers open, and a queue that looks like what is typically seen at Home Affairs.
I’ve often wished I could tell the big boss just what is going on with his store, or call centre, and wished that CEOs of mega companies with thousands of staff members would take utterings about customer centricity seriously.
Because that’s what you hear when you go to results presentations. It’s all about putting the customer first, and growing the customer base, and upselling.
Sorry, but that ain’t going to happen when some hapless customer has spent an hour trying to do a simple SIM swap.
CEOs need to, literally in some cases, get their hands dirty.
This is why I was quite pleased to hear Allen Ambor - Spur’s founder - on an EWN podcast the other day. A friend had told me about how he said he had cleaned the kitchen himself in the wee hours when the dishwashers had gone home.
No way!
Yes way, I listened to the podcast and true as nuts, Ambor spoke about his passion for the restaurant business, and how he had initially designed every outlet himself, and trained every franchisee himself.
When Ambor started out, it cost R24 000 to open a restaurant, an amount that is equivalent to R4 million today, and he had R2 000. He still opened his first branch in Cape Town in 1967.
Today, Spur is home not just to “people with a taste for life”, but also RocoMamas and Panarottis Pizza Pasta, to name just a few of its brands. The corporation, which is listed, now has 572 restaurants, including 62 outside South Africa.
Read also: Spur shows healthy increase in half-year sales
All this, according to Ambor, started because of his passion for the business, old-school work ethics and a desire to work hard and then harder still.
An anecdote he tells is of when it was 2am and the dishwashers had long gone home as they needed to catch the last bus. “I would scrub down the floors,” he says in the EWN interview.
Sure, Ambor does come across as boastful, but then he does have something to crow about.
Granted, every startup needs hands-on involvement from its founder, and I don’t know how much time he spends behind a grill now-a-days (apparently he gives yoga classes), but there is something to be said about his approach.
How many CEOs call their own call centre from a number that is not immediately fielded as VIP?
Read also: Spur to double RocoMamas base
How many walk into one of their outlets and shop like a normal person? I once took Grant Pattison, then Massmart CEO, shopping in his own store. For an article.
That took balls because the company’s reputation could have been irreparably harmed. Sadly, all the issues I pointed out (why assume the man is making the decisions?) are still there today, but he had the guts to see for himself.
What head honchos need to do is see for themselves (sorry, Cell C) and experience things from a consumer’s viewpoint. Then, and only then, will they be able to remove the silos that lead to the aggravation shoppers experience before electing to shop elsewhere.
Money talks, but it also walks, and it needs to be held onto in this difficult economic climate.
* Nicola Mawson is the online editor of Business Report. Follow her on Twitter @NicolaMawson or Business Report @busrep.
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