Amadin Idahosa
Julius Berger-AFP has won the 2021 ‘Best Customer Experience Company in Nigeria’ Award. AFP is the furniture and furnishing unit of Nigeria’s leading engineering construction company, Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, whose seamlessly horizontally integrated business value chain is widely reputed as the nation’s most dependable deliverer of excellent performance and customer satisfaction in all its impeccably delivered contractual obligations and transactional history in Nigeria.
The Nigeria Customer Service Award is the flagship and most prestigious annual award that celebrate companies’ customer service excellence in Nigeria. The award seeks to recognize and acknowledge reputable and alpha-rated companies that deliver effective and exceptional customer services in order to raise the standard of customer services and to encourage companies to go beyond merely paying lip service to customers.
To qualify for the highly rated award, companies are assessed based on their customer service practices in a process that includes customer feedback (nomination), review of staff and management process that relates to customer services, and lastly the Nigeria Mystery Shoppers Provider Service (NMSPS), www.mysteryshoppers.org.ng. Most importantly, Nigeria Customer Service Award is designed to better the evaluated companies’ own performances as opposed to the competition. The award helps organizations to listen to the voice of their customers by conducting an independent assessment of quality customer service using international survey tools to collect and analyze feedback from customers, and grade their responses using global rating standard as benchmark.
The nomination for the award opened in January 2021 via www.nigeriacustomerserviceawards.com, and through surveys and opinion polls. The second phase of the nomination was by using mystery shoppers to physically monitor the service delivery process of nominated companies in other to determine the best. Companies across Nigeria spends a great deal of time and money every year in their effort to win and retain customers. Research however, reveals that most companies are not doing enough to build strong customer relationships, even as more work is needed to build a strong, loyal and long lasting mutually satisfying relationship.
The vetting process for award nominees included the evaluative contexts of empathy, choice and personalized experiences of customers. Further analytical filters included a company’s verifiable discovery portals, access, ease of buying experience, ease of payment, customer’s satisfactory use of product or service, during and after sales support, customer departure protocols and customer return or retention. The MD and CEO of the award organizers, Customer Service Award Limited, Dr Aliyu Ilias said ‘…Julius Berger-AFP scored significantly well on all customer service delivery considerations to top the chart above its peers. Thus, Julius Berger-AFP is meritoriously announced the winner of the ‘2021 Best Customer Experience Company in Nigeria’ award’
Responding to the award to Julius Berger-AFP, the Head of Public Relations for the Julius Berger Nigeria Plc group, Prince Moses Duku, who received the award on behalf of the AFP, said, “As a responsible and dependable corporate entity, Julius Berger’s business philosophy and practice historically resonates with integrity, performance, solution-oriented partnership with the client, and uncompromising service reliability”. Duku also said that, “AFP being a proud member of the Julius Berger corporate heritage is commendably flying the great and excellent quality banner of its pedigree, the Julius Berger standard, offering only the very best product and service quality to its customers.” He further said that “…to emphasize the point, let me say it is not a fluke that the Julius Berger-AFP, for the past five consecutive years running, has won the Nigeria’s Furniture Company of the Year Award at the prestigious Abuja International Housing Show, Africa’s flagship continental housing exhibition platform”.
Duku concluded his remarks on a very cheerful note, saying, “…We can therefore humbly but truthfully say that in this business, both in product quality, style, functionality and strength as well as in service and support offerings and customer satisfaction, the Julius Berger-AFP has only itself to beat, and we intend to seriously keep it that way.”
“On behalf of our MD, executive management, the AFP team and indeed all our staff, we thank you for this encouraging award, and we commit to a consistently and progressively satisfactory customer service delivery to every existing client and future clients of the AFP.”
Keen watchers and watchdogs of the annual event comparatively consider the 2021 edition a more engaging and better-planned event with about 27 sectors in focus. The 2021 award saw the introduction of Customer Service Ambassadors in Nigeria for the first time. It also involved the participation of leading consulting firms, value assurance experts and real time mystery shopper monitors who, as undercover service ‘Police’, physically monitor and measure services performance by companies. Their aim in the service evaluation process include, to improve customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty to the brands, and make frontline employees aware of critical service needs of customers. The larger objective is to assist companies to listen to the voice of their customers and boost companies’ productivity and revenues.
Nigerians and the business community fondly call the 2021 Winner of the ‘Best Customer Experience Company in Nigeria’ award AFP for short. AFP has its ultra-modern furniture design studio and a vast state-of-the-art production factory located at the Idu Industrial Area of Abuja the federal Capital Territory. With the excellent and very reliable logistical support of the Julius Berger Fleet within the company’s matchless service delivery system, the AFP delivers its aesthetic, strong, and durable products to any destination in the country precisely as contracted, and, where necessary, within 24 hours.
Besides its dedicated interactive website, wwwafp.ng, the Julius Berger-AFP also have its physical showrooms at 55 Gana Street, Maitama Abuja, 33 Sanusi Fafunwa street Victoria Island Lagos; and also at AFP Mall, 52 Stadium Road Port Harcourt.
Julius Berger-AFP national Sales Manager, Uche Uzoewulu, and Sales Consultant, Mercy Ofuonyemeni were also in the Julius Berger Plc delegation to the award event which held at the Envoy hotel opposite the US embassy in Abuja last Thursday.
