Oct 8 (Lagos) - This week is International customer service week from Oct 7-11 2024 and we are focusing on the Nigerian version of the event. Do we really have customer service in Nigeria? Yes we do have customer service in Nigeria is the simple answer. But is it really there to help customers? or just another opportunity for pretty girls to do a photo-op and post on social media? 

Let's continue with the Banks. You go to a Bank in Nigeria to withdraw money and they tell you they cannot give you more than N 20,000 but you can step outside walk 200 meters and find a roadside vendor hawking Naira cash notes for a 'fee'. The open secret is that these vendors buy these cash notes from Bank managers for a fee and then add their own profit on top to sell to the same customers who would have previously withdrawn the notes from the Banks without paying any fee. When you complain to bank managers, they tell you soon this will be fixed but has continued for years now. CBN even has an investigation on-going for months. So where is customer service ? How long does it take to get a wrong charge returned back to you? how many hours or days did you spend doing so?

Let's come to Insurance Companies where they promise to settle your claims in 3 hours or some say 3 days. In reality this never happens and it takes months to get a claim settled even when you submit your documents, the claim managers keep coming up with more and more required documents to frustrate the clients. They tell you to get police reports for simple things like road accidents knowing that getting a police report often means buying a police report by spending money. 

Lets move on to consumer goods companies. Look at their advertisements and you see them claiming their products provide so much nutrition but is that really the case, are those claims actually true? Can those claims be validated? Can those advertisements be approved in Countries where is the serious oversight over such claims? It is laughable what these consumer goods companies are claiming in their advertisements. Can customers do anything about it? We remember the recent case of a pastor claiming that a water was going to clear diseases or the case of that women who went through hell because she wrote a review about a tomato paste online? She was even arrested and her whole saga is well documented on X (formerly twitter). 

Let's move on to sports betting Companies. These are the worst and it shocks us what they are able to claim in their advertisements. There is no disclaimer that you can lose all your money while gambling in sports betting. They continue to push Nigeria's youth deeper and deeper into gambling addiction. There is no mention of any help they can get to quit gambling that comes along with gambling advertisements in developed Countries. Nothing of that sort here. Yet there is customer service. 

Let's move on to petrol stations where it is a fight for your life in order to buy a tank of fuel. Often you feel scared to even stand there among touts and all kinds of aggressive people shouting an shoving just to buy fuel before you. So where is customer service. 

We can go on and on but you get our drift. There is no real customer service in Nigeria. The concept exists on paper but that is where it ends. Until we can buy things and return them to sellers without any questions been asked we are not where we want to be. 

So this week is a time to take nice pictures in front of the International customer service week and then forget about it till next year.