“I’d like to think that customer service is only an extension of how we treat each other”, the Acting Head of Mediazone said during the training of all new and old lab assistants last month. It sounded about right.
Having an actor’s background, he convincingly put us in situations with “all kinds of customers” and we were all caught by surprise. That stressed us out and of course we made mistakes; we were giving one word replies, “Calm down” (statements which are actually telling the person that they’re stressed when they may not even feel so, leading to stressing them out even more), not looking at them in the eye while talking to them or any kind of behaviour that makes the customer feel not wanted. Especially the one where the customer feels like they’re interrupting you from whatever you were or were not doing, is the worst.
We all know about the quality of customer service you get in shops and we all know about the surprise and warmth we suddenly feel that makes us smile, and just tell the employee what we’re looking for, or that we’re “ok” or when they’re just kind to us. We all have noticed how it bothers us when they’re not nice to us, especially when they could have been. In this case our customers are the students.
But I’m not sure whether we notice if and how the way we treat each other bothers us and what the relationship is between that and the customer service we can get. Why is it ok to be passive when we are mistreated by just people we know, yet it seems that we react when we are mistreated by individuals working in customer service?
So is being nice to someone a matter of money? Is it because the employees are paid to do it , because they’re there to serve the customer? Serve the customer. Serve the customer no matter what.
But we’re human beings, and if anything defines us as humans it is our understanding towards the person next to us. So why not, both customers and employees, friends and colleagues, students and professors, poor and rich, just treat each other as they’d like to be treated? We can all be in one of those positions; at the beginning or in the end. And I’m pretty sure, we’d like to be treated equally – no exceptions made with equal opportunities.
It’s all in the words and our psychology.
So; would you like to have a seat?
Lucia Protopapa – MZ Student Administrative Assistant
