Loosely defined, the term Customer Service describes the process of communication between a person or organization seeking to acquire a service of one sort or another and the individual or organization charged with dispensing that service. Everyday references to Customer Service are invariably applied to communication between persons seeking to secure goods or services from public or private sector organizations. Privately–run shops, stores, restaurants and hotels and state service agencies like the Guyana Revenue Authority and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation are among the more common examples of entities whose responsibilities require them to provide a considerable measure of necessary customer (or public) service.
Many, far too many public sector agencies have no sensitivity whatsoever to the concept of customer service. The service givers within those delinquent entities discharge their duties with dispositions that range from arrogance and aloofness to downright tastelessness, ignorant in many cases of the nexus between good customer service and the image and/or profitability of the organizations that they serve and altogether unconcerned about the resultant frustration and anger for service seekers. In some cases the degree of boorishness increases in direct proportion to the status of the service provider.
Neither the public sector nor the private sector has done much to engender a culture of service in Guyana. Making allowances for the sorry few exceptions to this rule there appears to be a preference in many public sector agencies for creating rules and procedures that are as infuriating as they are unnecessary and placing people who are altogether unresponsive to service considerations to administer those rules. In the case of many commercial concerns customer service limitations are, more often than not, associated with sales assistants who are often unschooled in even the basic rudiments of civility, who benefit from no on-the-job training whatsoever and who are, in some cases untrainable.
Of course, poor customer service in both the public and private sectors is often linked to an indifference on the part of the service giver engendered by the paucity of their rewards. Even allowing for a disciplined dedication to giving, service people who are unhappy with their remuneration and constantly preoccupied with their own material limitations are by no means the best bets as far as giving service with a sense of diligence and duty is concerned except, of course, in cases where there is a chance that they will be rewarded ‘over the top’ for their troubles.
The proliferation of Customer Service Consultants has not done a great deal to effectively address the problem of poor customer service. Some of the reasons include the tendency of some business owners to see training in Customer Service as a waste of money rather than an investment in the enhancement of their enterprises. The problem in the public sector appears to be more closely–linked to what appears to be less evidence of a decline in concern over service standards reflected in dwindling evidence of those old-fashioned orientation programmes that included sessions on the importance of giving service to which public servants used to be exposed very shortly after they took up their jobs.
These days, too, aspirants to service-giving positions in the state sector openly express a preference for becoming attached to agencies like the Customs and Trade Administration and other state entities where the orientation of the entity allows for compensation that often goes well beyond official emoluments.
Another problem lies with the training programmes themselves. Many of these are hastily conceived with no deep thought to the real purpose that they are intended to serve which means that such training programmes tend to embrace a kind of may I help you sir approach that is limited to instruction in the rudiments of politeness and ‘good manners (which really ought to have been taught at home) while failing to create the real and critical nexus between good customer service and the image and profitability of the entity providing that service.
Our proclivity for poor customer service has been one of the major reasons for a dangerously high level of public frustration. This applies particularly in the cases of some state sector service entities. If you canvass public opinion on entities like the Guyana Power and Light Company, the Customs and Trade Administration, the Guyana Water Inc and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation you are more likely to find that these are far from the most popular state sector service entities in Guyana. This newspaper is aware, for example, that it has become commonplace for patients, including the old, the infirm and those who cannot afford private medical care to have to arrive at the GPHC for clinics as early as 5 am if they are to have even a reasonable chance of being attended to by the middle of the day.
The consequences of a poor service culture go way beyond the frustrations that our own people endure, more-or-less, on a daily basis. It is no secret, for example, that potential overseas investors frequently complain about what a prominent private sector official once described as a preponderance of red tape rather than red carpet experienced in the process of investment enquiries. The complaints have ranged from the inexplicable delays in having duty-free concessions expedited to what often appears to be hindrances resulting from an absence of clarity relating to rules and regulations and differences of opinion between and among executing agencies relating to the correct implementation of those rules. And since potential investors – unlike ordinary Guyanese who often have little choice but to endure the poor quality service delivered by the delinquent state agencies – are under no compulsion to endure those inefficiencies, some of them simply pack their belongings and take their investments elsewhere.
In the case of some private sector business places you venture inside only if you have to and when you do you have to be prepared to put up with rudeness, unpleasantness and even being ignored by people who often have little else but their preoccupation with their false airs and graces to recommend them -all this, in circumstances where your patronage is linked directly to their earnings.
And then there are the cases of the owners of some of these establishments – like the roach-infested snackette run by a large city department store about which this newspaper wrote a few weeks ago – who see customers solely in terms of the patronage that they bring and are both ill-equipped and ill-disposed to providing good customer service. Complete and utter disregard for service seekers, whether those services are paid for or otherwise, is, quite simply, a way of life in Guyana.
Those public and private sector entities and officials who continue to cling to the belief that good customer service makes a qualitative difference to the society as a whole and that, in the case of the private sector, a mindfulness of customer concerns can actually enhance profitability, are few and far between. What we have discovered from our own observations is that owners of some business establishments are themselves unschooled in the nexus between good customer service and the growth and development of the enterprise. As one private sector official told us recently some, perhaps many local owners of commercial entities whom we loosely describe as businessmen are, in fact, no more than clever traders whose understanding of business never seems to go much beyond ‘the bottom line.’ That is a distressing thing since part of our concern surely ought to be with the quality of society in which we live and that includes the sense of satisfaction that we derive from both giving and receiving service.
