Mr Aliyu Ilias, the Executive Director, Save the Consumers Initiative, on Saturday said companies in Nigeria and Africa are closing down due to bad customer services.
He made the assertion in Abuja at a public presentation of a book he authored on ”Understanding Customer Experience in Africa”.
According to him, if companies must secure high patronage of goods and services they produce, they must give people good experience that will guarantee high patronage and make for high profit.
”Manufacturers, producers need to redirect their products and services to offer good customer service experience, if not, companies from outside Nigeria and Africa will come and take the money away.
”They must learn how to give people good experience, good experience will make people to patronise them. Some companies are going out of business because of bad customer experience.
”African’s, Nigerian’s, don’t complain but they will go behind and tell each other about what they experienced with such companies.
“This is why a book like this is written to guide people to retain their customers and to stop customer shunning,” he said.
Ilias said that Africans do not want to spend their monies where they would not be appreciated, adding that competitors would always want to push rival companies out of business due to lack of good customer service experience.
He said that for Africa to have standard consumer policy, the African Union must come together to formulate the policy and ensure that companies adhered to them.
Mr Kofo Salam-Alada, the Director, Consumer Protection Department, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), also called on companies to make their customers the centre of attraction by building their products and services around them.
According to Salam-Alada, the development of any product and services must be from the stand point of the customers who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the product and services.
“We have discovered that in Nigeria and Africa generally, we do not subscribe or play out the general statement of ‘customers are always right’ or are the king, a good example is how customers are treated by molue and Danfo drivers around Lagos, Nigeria.
“This book will fill certain gaps in Nigeria’s literacy world and for Central Bank, we take the issue of financial literacy very serious in order to ensure we obtain our target of financial education by year 2020.
“This book is such that, it is going to tell customers their rights which is also obtained in the banking industry,”he said.
He however called on companies to give consideration to customer’s rights whenever they were offering goods and services to the public.
Mr Ibrahim Abubakar, the Special Assistant to All Progressives Congress (APC), National Secretary said that the choice of making customer happy must be prioritised by any company which intend to succeed in Nigeria.
According to Abubakar, customers are the key to every successful business, the choice to give them their desired satisfaction must be considered by every business owner in the country.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the book presented to the public has 13 chapters with 143 pages.