Consumer Satisfaction – Vital to Product Loyalty, Trust – Irukera
The Director-General of the Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Babatunde Irukera has charged businesses to understand the signs of the times and embrace the new order, characterized by the practice of prioritizing consumer protection as the pre-eminent factor in protecting brands and businesses, as well as managing crisis, building confidence and corporate growth.
Irukera, who made these remarks at a meeting of the Association of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Employers (AFTBE), noted that customer service can no longer be ancillary to business, especially in the food and beverage industry. Rather, he said, it must be the core of all business operations.
He described the AFTBE gathering as a powerful demonstration of the member-companies’ resolve to ensure consumer protection as a fundamental component of economic growth.
He reiterated the Buhari administration’s recognition of the role of businesses and CEOs in economic expansion, and its readiness to listen to credible, transparent, genuine, fair-minded, well-meaning and socially responsible businesses on the way forward.
The CPC boss argued that consumer protection was more important than Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), noting that CSR was sometimes viewed with suspicion and characterized as self-serving, in part because the companies and their products and services have not truly satisfied their customers.
He expressed his support for the “optional Corporate Social Responsibility”, but stated his insistence on what he termed “a mandatory Corporate Obligatory Responsibility (COR),” stressing that a vibrant combination of both was the best possible brand and reputational investment possible. “Nothing repairs or maintains reputation and eliminates distrust better,” the CPC boss maintained, “than fairness to customers and satisfaction in the products they purchase or consume.”
He emphasized the conformity of objectives between his organization and the association, namely, to please consumers. “When customer service is at its best, consumers are truly happy, spending is up, economic indicators are encouraging, my job is done, your performance is assured, and your brands endure.”
To that end, he added, collaboration in consumer protection was not just an imperative, but an enlightened approach to a joint objective, pointing out that while businesses see consumer satisfaction as a means to a commercial end, it was an end in itself and a constitutional duty for the CPC. The global convergence in sophistication and expectations of consumers, Irukera noted, was an unavoidable reality. “Governments may at different times go in different directions on various issues, but consumers do not.”
In the spirit of collaboration towards achieving the aforementioned shared objective of customer satisfaction, the CPC D-G identified a number of policy priorities of his organisation, among them the organisation’s effort to reinforce existing complaint resolution mechanisms. He informed the meeting that the CPC would introduce a more efficient system with the right technology to ensure that companies are the primary point of resolution, only resorting to the CPC in rare cases of serious or industry-wide abuses that required major and urgent immediate intervention.
The DG also expressed confidence in the ability of the meeting to counter threats such as counterfeiting and adulteration. He enjoined companies to be more innovative and proactive in partnering with regulators to address this menace. “We must be able to swiftly and unequivocally eliminate confusion or dual possibilities about the source of a defective product,” he said.
In his earlier remarks, the Group Managing Director of Flour Mills Nigeria Plc, Mr. Paul Gbededo, described the AFBTE as a group of industries that have a close engagement with Nigerian consumers. Gbededo said members of the association were eager to collaborate with the Council and happy to be regulated by the government agency. According to him, a mutually rewarding partnership between the association and the Council would be for the good of the country as well as for the numerous consumers of their various products.
Signed: Abiodun Obimuyiwa, Deputy Director (Public Relations)
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