Listen to your customers

After eight years in the banking industry in Lagos, Nigeria, I quit my job last year. It was difficult to leave my “family” at the bank and the customers I’d always attended to, but I had missed so much in the lives of my children. I was always working, and that was beginning to affect me mentally.

I wanted to help more people with the knowledge I’d gained over the years, so I began writing customer service content on LinkedIn. I’ve been growing this into a business, in which I advise organizations on how to improve their customer service. I focus on customer retention, customer satisfaction and escalation management.

Experience comes with some hard lessons. Soon after I started at the bank, a customer came to say his phone had been stolen. Mobile banking is very common in Nigeria, and your phone number is linked to your account, so I was supposed to block that number. Instead, I froze the account. However, that meant the customer also had no access to it, so after a few days, he asked us to unfreeze his account. Unfortunately, the number was still not blocked, and eight million naira (about €18,000) had been stolen from his account. When he found out, he came into the bank shouting, and all the attention was on me.

Luckily, I had good bosses who stood up for me. I wasn’t sacked. The bank paid the money, and I paid them back from my salary over time. I’d made a costly mistake. I was trying to be efficient and work quickly. What I failed to do was to listen and pay attention to details. Listening is a key skill in any organization, and empathy goes a very long way in customer service.

My father was an entrepreneur, and maybe that’s why I have a passion for start-ups. There are a whole lot of them in Lagos. They tend to be good at winning new customers, but not very good at keeping them. I teach them the importance of listening and being patient. Patience will help you a lot in this profession, because you’re going to see the good, the bad and the ugly. But if you earn your customers’ trust, they’ll come to you before they go to your competitor.