Poor Customer Service is Bad Public Relations

"There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Sam Walton

By Niran Adedokun

Whoever came up with the saying “customer is king” could not have had Nigeria in mind. Here, the customer is anything but King. He ends up with the short end of the stick at every turn.


The customer in Nigeria suffers from uncontrolled inflation, unregulated standards and perhaps, the worst customer service available anywhere in the world. Government gives no care to what happens to him and so he is totally at the mercy of the big service provider.  And it does not matter where the service provider comes from, it could be Europe, Asia, America or any other jurisdiction where customer is, indeed, king,  but when they open shop in Nigeria, they learn to behave like the (“Romans”) businesses they met on ground, subjecting the customer to the worst service possible and without any apologies.

Companies and brands in Nigeria carry on like they are oblivious of the fact that the customer is perhaps the most important public in the production chain. They carry on like he doesn’t matter; after all, no one seems to protect the interest of the consumer here. The Nigerian Consumer Protection Council exists, quite all right, but...

A couple of years ago, I walked into the Lagos office of Arik Air, one of the major airlines in Nigeria, to purchase a ticket for a flight to Abuja. As I waited in the long unorganised queue, the reporter in me took over; I turned round to read some of the items on the notice board. I couldn’t believe one of the things that I saw. It was a memo banning a particular newspaper correspondent from boarding any flight operated by this airline. His offence, of course, was that he wrote something in his column which the airline found offensive.

Two weeks ago, my brother and his superior at work had another encounter with this airline. They had purchased tickets to fly out of Kaduna to Lagos at about 12:35 on a Sunday afternoon, on time to board the South African Airways flight to Johannesburg scheduled for 10:30pm that night. At about 9pm on Saturday, the eve of their flight out of Kaduna, the airline sent a text message as follows: “Dear Guest, your Arik Air flight W3 412 Kaduna-Lagos on 18Mar at 12:35 has been rescheduled to operate at 20:45. Please call 01-2799999 for enquiries. Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for choosing Arik Air, The Wings of Nigeria.” A seven hour time rescheduling! Just like that.

Thank God, there was another airline flying out of Kaduna on Sunday morning, so these guys had to buy new tickets so they could make their flight out of Lagos. I know that a lot of readers will consider this to be less than the usual evil of delay that you encounter with Nigerian airlines. Was it not in this same country that businessman, Mr. Jimoh Ibrahim, announced the suspension all Air Nigeria operation last September, shortly after the airline had lured hundreds of Nigerians to fly at cheaper rates to the United Kingdom through a sales promotion? Of course, these hundreds were stranded in London for days. Those who had to return to Nigeria urgently, had to buy new tickets while those who couldn’t afford fresh tickets waited until the time for Ibrahim to favour them came. And, of course, when they eventually got back to Nigeria, everyone went back home rejoicing, I heard no single complaint. We are just used to being shortchanged.

In Nigeria, airlines delay passengers hours on end, sometimes without as much as an apology. You buy a ticket online and a very minor error would see you pay two or three times the amount you paid purchasing that online ticket to be on the same flight or any other one for that matter. For some people, paying any amount for tickets may not be the issue but the ticketing officer in the average airline office in Nigeria has little or no respect for the passenger. They drag their feet to solve problems and speak in a damn- the-consequences manner that makes you wonder whether they were rendering the service for free.

This is not just about airlines, this attitude cuts across the service sector. You pay for a service but you never get value for your money. That is what happens in the telecommunications sector, in the banking sector, in the manufacturing sector and yes, in the public sector.

 One of the best marketing tools for businesses is words of mouth communications from persons who may have experienced the goods and services of such businesses. Legendary entertainer and entrepreneur, Walt Disney sure knew this when he said “   Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” That is why serious minded business people treat customers well. They realise that the customer is their first Public Relations tool; they set such customers up for the best and wait for the multiplier effect of treating the customer right.
Conversely, a negative reaction from customers is one of the worst incidences of bad PR that an organisation could suffer. Businesses in Nigeria cannot take their customers for granted forever. Someday, and perhaps, sooner than we think, Nigerian customers would wake up to the potentials available in the laws of the land and one single class action may deal a fatal blow on some careless businesses. So, the time is now to put the customer in his rightful place in Nigeria!