An Art

What's customer service? That's the first question i ask myself every single time I interact with a business on a personal level or my fellow human being whether its the first time we are indulging or its a frequent one on one or should we say one on many whichever applies.
In this fast paced evolving world of today, social skills and interactions dominate at every level, for example job interviews have changed for most predominantly successful companies, they apply the use of social media detectives as well as using psychological analysis methods before, on and after the interviews. They do this in order to ensure that they obtain the best out of the very important human aspect of doing business thus affecting their company principles and ideals positively leading to an emotional connection to their customer which increases sales and profitability. By this I stand with most companies that do this because hey! we live in a world where make-up is used to cover up the ugly that everyone has instead of magnifying the beauty that we all have as intended by the creator.
This being said, I define customer service as an art with many layers and different perspectives, take for instance the image that accompanies this article, some will say that it has a satanic connotation to it because of the one conspicuous eye whereas others will define it as a piece of art drawn by a human being on psychedelics some might even determine the emotions the artist had when he drew it. The same applies to customer service how one reacts/responds to a customer's query either through body language or spoken word almost certainly determines how the customer will perceive the brand and later on lead to either the lose of business or the loyalty of the customer. I will use Safaricom the leading cellular service provider in Kenya to illustrate further the artistic nature of customer service. As a company they have developed quite an intriguing self-care service system that in my opinion has officially redefined the call center job description.For instance their app has revolutionized mobile money transactions as well as utility bills payments. In other words they have reduced the chances of having wrong transactions. If this wasn't enough, for those who don't have access to the internet they have devised a way of reversing wrong transactions before they even happen. If you ask me they scored such high points in the hearts of the poor, middle class and the rich alike just for making everything easier and influencing perceptions positively.
As companies seek to grow steadily and wade of competitors they need to shift their focus more onto influencing existing and potential customers perceptions, in my opinion they can do this by pondering over the question: WHAT EMOTION DO WE EVOKE IN OUR CLIENTS? As per our earlier illustration we have noted that the value we deliver to our customers and the value they feel is delivered. These are two very different and imposing concepts and it being a changing world the latter takes precedence over the former, part of the reason why one person might buy a Range Rover despite its questionable reliability issues as opposed to a comparable V8 that will run for a lifetime.
By any means this is not a text book guide on how to go about one's business but rather a thought provoking subject geared towards unlocking key elements of customer service and safeguarding customer loyalty take for instance the fact that your employees are your first customers and how you treat them determines how far up you shall go as a company or how low your company might sink after collapsing.
Some of these strategies lie deep within us and all that we need to do is to focus on our natural empathetic nature as human beings and see that fairness, equality and above all service and value delivery have very positive impacts to every company's bottom line and that all these are artistic ways of sustainably doing business.
And with that said; DEFINE YOUR OWN MEANING TO THE TERM CUSTOMER SERVICE AND MANIFEST IT.