January 28, 2021
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Madam Yvonne Ohui Maccarthy, President, Institute of Customer Service Professionals (ICSP) has said Customer Service Index (CSI) for the year 2020 increased by 3.3 percent as against that of 2019.

She said a survey conducted by the Institute with a sample size of 3,182 for the year in review saw the index at 65.55 per cent whereas that of 2019 was 62.62 per cent.

Madam McCarthy said this at a media engagement on Thursday in Accra to provide reports on how various sectors in the country were performing in relation to customer services.

The event also provided the opportunity to measure customer satisfaction of institutions in Ghana through interactions by industry players.

Madam McCarthy said the survey, third in series, focused on hospitality, retail malls, insurance, online businesses, banking, health care, transportation, telecommunications, utilities and public sectors of the economy.

Speaking on the performances of the sectors in relation to customer service, she said the results of the survey indicated that hospitality came first with 76.63 per cent, retail malls, second with a customer service percentage of 74 per cent, insurance with 71.79 per cent, online businesses with 69.99 per cent, banking with 65.84 percent, health care with 63.84 per cent, telecommunications with 63.24 per cent, in that order.

Transportation, utilities and public institutions were ranked at the bottom three with 59.91 per cent, 56.86 per cent and 53.83 per cent respectively.

Explaining the impacts of COVID-19 on customer service, Madam McCarthy, said despite the fact that the pandemic had adverse impacts on various sectors, there had been positive impacts as well.

She explained that the pandemic helped organizations to be extra innovative, re-evaluate and reset their ways of executing duties as created seamless services to provide customer satisfaction.

“Before the pandemic set-in, consumers of telecommunication services were not usually tracking their consumption of internet data, but because most of us were not that busy due to the lockdown, we usually checked how much data we have consumed after using our phones for some time. The pandemic made people more conscious of their data usage,” she said.

Madam McCarthy advised business owners to provide workers with necessary resources and technological tools to enhance effective work.

Mr. Clement H. Holloway, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Wewrite Technologies, a consultant on the project, said ICSP had provided a customer service survey platform, a customer service online courses platform and a serve check accreditation application platform, which helped in the assessment.

He said the customer service survey platform gave customers the opportunity to lodge their complaints when unsatisfied with the services of institutions they visited.

Mr Holloway said customers could share their experiences via www.ghanacsi.org/survey, for future surveys.
Mr. Albert Cofie, Managing Director, Hegemony Consultancy, assured citizens of the effective and smooth usage of the platforms provided by the institution.

He encouraged citizens to speak out in cases, where they got dissatisfied services to improve customer service in the country.

Source: Ghana News Agency


January 20, 2021
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The West Africa Association of Customer Service Professionals [WAACSP], the umbrella body of Service Professionals in the ECOWAS region, will start the 2021 service year with the 2nd induction of service professionals, members, and patrons of the body.

The induction will see the body admit new members on the three (3) membership platforms; Certified, Professional, and Fellows categories.

The ceremony will hold simultaneously in Accra, Ghana, Lagos, and Abuja – Nigeria in compliance with all covid19 protocols on March 27th, 2021. Lagos – Nigeria is the designated host city. However, all three venues and members who will be inducting from their homes will be linked virtually.

With its core mandate of grooming and projecting employable professionals to better shape the advocacy in excellent service experience, WAACSP will for the first time welcome its inaugural set of mentors and patrons to help provide leadership to the association’s growing membership base, shaping the discussion in improved quality of service delivery and lend their voices to the aims and objective of the association.

Four thought leaders from the region will be inducted as patrons of WAACSP namely; Sola Salako Ajulo, co-founder Consumer Advocacy Foundation of Nigeria (CAFON) and special adviser to Ekiti State Governor on communications, Chairman Essien – Customer experience advocate, from Ghana. Bernard Osei-Duah, head BOD Consult, one of Ghana’s leading CX educators with service culture teachings across Africa, Rufai Oseni – one of Nigeria’s leading social awareness and civic responsibility advocates, co-host ‘The Morning Show’ on AriseTV and ‘Impact with Rufai’ across radio stations in Nigeria.

The three (3) platforms for membership induction are:

Certified Members
Participants from the WAACSP basic certification in customer service programs for the years 2019 and 2020.

Professional Members-
Open to trained Service professionals currently practicing within the last 24months who are not yet members of WAACSP.

Fellow Membership-
Senior service supervisor executives, managers, and heads of CS departments with not less than 8 years in the service industry.

Over 300 new members will be inducted at the event.

WAACSP aside charting the direction for service experience in the region, have put in place various mechanism to ensure service professionals are listed, rated, certified, and projected for employment. The WAACSP recruitment webpage is the only recognized recruitment portal for direct access to accredited service professionals for customer service and allied jobs.

In 2018, the WAACSP recruitment portal recorded a 28% engagement rate between members and corporate organizations. [View sample of members as listed for engagement here

The body’s strategic partnership with customer service associations in Southern Africa, North America, and top international brands is opening frontiers for program and learning exchange of resource professionals and international certification affiliation.

Aside from being honored last year as Africa’s Customer Service icon for 2020 in Eswatini, WAACSP board chairperson Yvonne Ohui MacCarthy is also on the advisory board of the Africa Service Culture Think-tank working on the 2021 Africa conference on service experience billed to hold in October organized by Customer Experience Evolution Africa [CEEA]. The opportunities arising from joining WAACSP at this time are career impacting.

The 2021 service year will also herald the 2021-23 service education curriculum. The basic certification in the customer service program will be expanded while the Advanced Customer Service Program will be introduced in the WAACSP training calendar.

As a result of these, the body will also open its training network to more training partners/organizations as WAACSP affiliate training partners to make service education accessible.

Also, customer service trainers will be recruited into the WAACSP trainers’ network for the 2021-23 training calendar.

Training organizations looking to affiliate with WAACSP, click HERE 
Customer experience trainers wishing to join the WAACSP trainers network, Click HERE  to proceed.

The 2021 induction is open to customer service persons of West African origin and there are enriching and career rewarding benefits from being a member.

Visit the WAACSP induction website to start processing your membership and induction.

For further details contact WAACSP via:
www.thewaacsp.com
Email: [email protected]
GSM:
Nigeria –
+234 702 500 3527
Ghana –
+233 57 076 0360

Follow WAACSP and all its activities on TwitterFacebook, and Instagram.

Source: Global Times Nigeria

October 11, 2019
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Head of the Institute of Customer Service Professionals (ICSP), Yvonne Ohui Maccarthy, has said most Ghanaian businesses do not understand the underpinning issues of customer service.

Bringing the celebration of customer service week in the month of October to an end, Ms Yvonne explained that businesses in Ghana do not really understand and recognise the importance of customer service provision and just copy blindly from the developed countries.

Originating from the US, Customer Service Week celebration established and celebrated from 1984 to 1992 by the International Customer Service Association and later passed by Congress was proclaimed a weekly celebration every year.

Speaking in an interview on Joy News’ evening programme PM Express, monitored  by Adomonline.com, she explained that, customer service is taking action to create value for someone and not service one receives before and after a purchase.

“Do things differently that genuinely address what the customer wants, every organisation is in to make money but it’s the customer that is the most important person in the chain. So you now have to sit to think and create value for them,” she said.

She described the practice of Ghanaian businesses showing appreciation to clients mostly during customer week service as poor.

“We have 52 weeks in the year, why thank me during customer service week, we’ve missed the point completely,” she said.

The ICSP in 2018 released the Ghana Customer Service index which studied and measured the level of customer service delivery in eight sectors of the economy.

According to the index report by ICSP, Ghana was ranked C in customer delivery service. Among the sectors studied were online businesses, retail, utility, hospitality and telecommunication companies.

In the study, sectors like the hospitality industry, run by foreigners, provided better customer service as compared to sectors like the public and the utility sector run by Ghanaians.

“Customer service in the country is poor because people are not given strict guidelines to work by, they are not trained to give excellent customer service to clients when employed. Organisations and businesses need to invest in customer service and employ the right people with the right mindset, attitude and skills set,” she added.

 

Source: Adomonline.com|Fuaad Dodoo


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