Customer Care and Business Communication

Lessons

Senior 3 · Entrepreneurship

Customer Care and Business Communication

4 lessons

Lesson 2 of 4

Principles of Customer Care and the Value of Good Service

25 min

One complaint, two endings

Mr Habimana is building a house in Kicukiro. He returns to the hardware shop where he bought cement last week. Read both versions of the conversation, then decide: in which version will he buy the rest of his building materials here?

Version A
Customer	Good morning. Last week I bought ten bags of cement here, and one was as hard as stone.
Assistant (still looking at her phone)	Cement is cement. Did you leave it in the rain?
Customer	No, it was hard when I opened it. And I need ten more bags.
Assistant	Delivery is tomorrow. Maybe. Pay first.
Customer	Can you at least replace the bad bag?
Assistant	That is not my problem. Talk to the boss. He is not here.

Version B
Assistant (puts the phone away, smiles)	Good morning, sir, welcome. How can I help you?
Customer	Last week I bought ten bags of cement here, and one was as hard as stone.
Assistant	I am sorry to hear that. A hard bag is no use for building. Do you still have the receipt?
Customer	Yes, here it is.
Assistant	Thank you. We will replace that bag free of charge. How many bags do you need today?
Customer	Ten more.
Assistant	Our truck delivers in Kicukiro tomorrow between 8 and 10 in the morning, or you can collect them now with your own transport. Which suits you better?
Customer	Tomorrow morning is fine.
Assistant	Good. So that is eleven bags, one of them a free replacement, delivered tomorrow between 8 and 10. Here is your receipt, and I will call you if the truck is late. Thank you for telling us about the bad bag.

The cement, the prices and the delivery day are the same in both versions. What changed is how the assistant applied the principles of customer care. The shop, the people and the conversations are illustrative.

Definition

Principles of customer care: the rules of behaviour that guide how a business and its staff treat customers, so that customers are satisfied and loyal.

Customer loyalty: a customer’s habit of returning to the same business and recommending it to others.

Word of mouth: what customers tell other people about a business, good or bad, in person or online.

Example: in Version B the assistant kept the principle of honest information (a delivery window she can meet); Mr Habimana’s loyalty and his word of mouth are what the shop gains.

The principles of customer care

Know your customers: their needs, preferences and habits.
Treat every customer with courtesy and respect, equally, whoever they are: no favouring friends, relatives or rich customers.
Listen actively and show empathy: let the customer finish, then show you understand.
Give accurate, honest information about products, prices and delays.
Be prompt: serve and answer without unnecessary delay.
Keep promises and be reliable: promise only what you can deliver.
Offer choices, so the customer keeps some control.
Handle complaints positively, using the LAST method below, and learn from them.
Protect customers’ personal information.
Follow up after the sale, and look for chances to go beyond what is expected.

Do and don’t: serving a customer in person

Do	Don’t
greet the customer at once, face them and make eye contact	leave a customer waiting while you chat or use your phone
listen without interrupting	argue, or blame the customer
use polite words: please, thank you, sorry	use rude, careless or overfamiliar language
explain clearly, in words the customer knows	use jargon or hide information about delays and prices
offer options and confirm the details back	promise what you cannot deliver
serve customers in turn and treat all equally	serve friends and relatives first
thank the customer and follow up	send a complaining customer away to “the boss”

The value of good service, and the cost of poor service

Good service brings …	Poor service costs …
loyal customers who buy again and again	customers who leave for competitors
free positive word of mouth and good reviews	negative word of mouth, which spreads further and faster
higher sales and profit	lower sales, refunds and compensation
an advantage over competitors selling the same goods	a price war, because price is the only reason left to buy
a good reputation that attracts customers and staff	a damaged reputation that is slow and costly to repair
fewer complaints and lower costs of handling them	time lost on disputes; possible complaints to RICA and legal action
motivated staff who are proud of their work	demotivated staff, and in the end the closure of the business

Tip

Exam technique. For “Explain the value of good customer service”, pair each point with its opposite: a question on the cost of poor service can then be answered from the same table. Always end a point with its effect on sales, profit or survival.

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Worked example 1: what one lost customer costs

Mr Habimana spends about Frw 60,000 a month at the hardware shop while he builds, and he will keep buying for 3 years. The shop’s profit is 15% of what he spends. If Version A drives him away, and he also persuades 2 other builders who spend the same to stop buying there, what profit does the shop lose?

Step 1: profit from him per year: $15\% \times 60{,}000 \times 12 = 0.15 \times 720{,}000 = 108{,}000$ Frw.

Step 2: over 3 years: $108{,}000 \times 3 = 324{,}000$ Frw.

Step 3: with the 2 builders he tells: $324{,}000 \times 3 = 972{,}000$ Frw.

Step 4: compare. Replacing the bad bag would have cost the shop one bag of cement. Refusing it risks nearly a million francs of profit. All figures are illustrative.

Worked example 2: applying LAST to Version A

Rewrite the assistant’s part of Version A using the LAST method.

Listen: put the phone away, face the customer, let him explain the whole problem.

Apologise: “I am sorry the bag was hard; that must have delayed your work.”

Solve: check the receipt and replace the bag, or refund it; confirm the new order and the delivery time.

Thank: “Thank you for telling us; we will check how our cement is stored.”

Why it works: each step meets a basic need from Lesson 1: understanding (listen), empathy (apologise), fairness and control (solve), friendliness (thank).

Warning

Common mistakes. (1) Arguing about whose fault a problem was before solving it: even when the customer is partly wrong, solve first. (2) Apologising without solving: “sorry” alone sounds empty. (3) Treating a complaint as an attack: a complaint is free information about what to improve, and a customer who complains gives you a chance that a customer who silently leaves does not.

Customer Service Fundamentals, a short training video by Don Crawley (about 4 minutes). Watch for the principles he names and find each one in this lesson’s list.

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Practice

What is meant by principles of customer care? State five of them.
Identify three principles that the assistant applied in Version B, quoting her words.
Give four “don’ts” for a shop assistant serving a customer.
Explain the four steps of the LAST method.
State three benefits of good customer service to a business and three costs of poor service.
A restaurant customer spends Frw 8,000 a week, and the restaurant’s profit is 25% of sales. How much profit does the restaurant lose in a year (52 weeks) if the customer stops coming?
“The customer is always right.” Evaluate this saying, using an example.

Show answersHide answers

The rules of behaviour that guide how staff treat customers so that they are satisfied and loyal. Any five: know your customers; courtesy and equal respect; listen and show empathy; accurate, honest information; promptness; keep promises; offer choices; handle complaints positively; protect personal information; follow up.
For example: empathy (“I am sorry to hear that”); honest information (“delivers … between 8 and 10”); offering choices (“Which suits you better?”); keeping promises and follow-up (“I will call you if the truck is late”).
Any four: don’t ignore a waiting customer; don’t use your phone while serving; don’t argue or blame; don’t promise what you cannot deliver; don’t use jargon; don’t favour friends.
Listen (let the customer explain fully); Apologise (for the trouble); Solve (agree a fair remedy and act); Thank (for raising the problem). Then follow up.
Benefits: loyalty and repeat sales; positive word of mouth; higher profit (also competitive advantage, reputation, staff morale). Costs: lost customers; negative word of mouth; refunds and complaints (also damaged reputation, legal action, closure).
Weekly profit $25\% \times 8{,}000 = 2{,}000$ Frw; yearly $2{,}000 \times 52 = 104{,}000$ Frw.
Partly true: treating customers as right encourages staff to listen and solve problems, which keeps customers. But customers can be wrong, e.g. a customer who damaged a phone by dropping it cannot demand a free replacement under warranty. A better rule: the customer is always treated with respect and listened to, and the business is honest about what it can fairly do.

Sources and credits

Photo: Pharmacist with PSI products Kigali, Rwanda, Marshall Stowell, PSI, for the President’s Malaria Initiative, Wikimedia Commons, public domain (work of the US government).
Video: Customer Service Fundamentals: Customer Service Training 101, Don Crawley, embedded from YouTube.

Written by Ganzaa: the two dialogues, the principles, the LAST diagram, the do-and-don’t and value tables, the worked examples and the practice items. The shop, the people and the figures are illustrative (2026).

1One complaint, two endings

2The principles of customer care

3Do and don’t: serving a customer in person

4The value of good service, and the cost of poor service

One complaint, two endings

The principles of customer care

Do and don’t: serving a customer in person

The value of good service, and the cost of poor service