In order to raise awareness among both service providers and service seekers of the importance of Good Customer Service Stabroek Business has commissioned a series of articles on the issue by Ms. Jacqui Hamer, Director of the standards of improvement organization, Visions of Excellence.
During the course of this series Ms. Hamer will address among other things, Customer Service concerns that are common to our society and suggest ways in which those concerns can be addressed. Ms. Hamer will also be examining Customer Service cultures and practices in other countries and how these impact on those societies as a whole.
Following is the first in the series of articles.
By Jacqui Hamer
I suspect that during the course of my observations in this newspaper on the subject of Customer Service I might give offence to some people since there is no shortage of thin-skinned people in our society. If I give offence, however, that is only because I sincerely believe that in more ways than one we have neglected to confront some of the ugly truths about the problem of low standards of Customer Service in Guyana. We desperately need to confront those truths. Why? Because I believe – as I hope do readers – that on the whole we can and will be a qualitatively better society – and in more ways than one – if we can improve the level of our sensitivity to the concerns of people who seek the services that we provide.
I have already said that our standard of Customer Service in Guyana is, on the whole, distressingly low. This of course is not to say that we will not find high standards in some places. On the whole, however, I have found that instances of unpleasantness, unhelpfulness, indifference, rudeness and, sometimes, downright backwardness are to be found in an alarmingly high number of places where people are required to go to receive one service or another. Some service providers, in my view, simply have no perception of what Customer Service is. For them it is simply a matter of goods and services changing hands, sometimes in exchange for money, sometimes not. Other service providers simply couldn’t care less.
Some of the articles that I have read on Customer Service both in the local media and elsewhere, have, I believe, needlessly complicated the issue. There is, at least in my opinion, nothing particularly complicated about providing Good Customer Service and it is decidedly unhelpful to treat the subject as though it were a complex academic discipline. I accept entirely that there are approaches to Good Customer Service that have been refined into books and training manuals. On the other hand I believe that it is really all a matter of putting one self in the position of the service seeker, applying the virtues of politeness, helpfulness, patience, sensitivity and an awareness of and concern for the needs and conveniences of the customer in pursuit of responding to the needs of those who we must serve. Good Customer Service begins and ends with our attitudes to people as a whole, to their needs and to how we can best respond to those needs. Much of it is about decency, caring and sensitivity.
Good Customer Service begins with a good upbringing on the part of the service provider. You can be trained in Customer Service but if you bring a good upbringing to the job, an upbringing that is informed by a sense of decency and respect for the feelings of others you are probably likely to make a better service provider. Of course there are taught skills that are part of Customer Service training. If, however, you bring that strong sense of decency and caring to the job your attitude to learning the taught skills will be far more positive. On the other hand tendencies towards arrogance, rudeness, and sloppiness are particularly difficult to remedy, whatever the training.
Most of us, at one point in time or another, are either givers or recipients of one service or another. Understand-ing this lies at the heart of grasping the real significance of Customer Service. The phenomenon is not confined to buying or selling or seeking to have an Income Tax return expedited. It is a continuum of relationships between and among people which could include, for example, the seeking and granting of any ordinary, everyday favour. How we dispense these favours (or services) and the manner in which we receive them goes way beyond the conventional understanding of Customer Service. It has to do with the universality of relationships among people and the way in which the quality of those relationships shape people, communities and societies. Good Customer Service in the sense that I conceptualize the issue has a direct bearing on the quality of the society as a whole.
The onus as far as Good Customer Service is concerned rests with both the service provider and the service seeker. Frankly, people who accept poor customer service without protest contribute significantly to the problem. My own experience of poor customer service is that the practice is actually re-enforced in circumstances where the victim chooses not to seek redress or to tender an appropriate response. I have had more than one experience of having to bring indifferent, gum-chewing salesgirls to their senses by asserting myself in the presence of their rudeness and indifference. Indeed, what I have found is that their attitudes, invariably, are mask for their own personal insecurity and that when confronted with a service–seeker who will neither ignore their tantrums or back away from their coarse attitudes they very quickly come to their senses.
In this particular context I believe that what is sometimes the ill manners and airy indifference of salespersons at downtown stores actually feeds off the defensiveness of service-seekers. Many, perhaps most people are either intimidated by their attitude or simply couldn’t be bothered to make an issue of it. I believe that every act of indifference, every indication of an indisposition to providing service, every instance of rudeness on the part of service- givers should be met with a robust – not hostile but robust – response. Generally, I have found that poorly-trained and rude salespersons have mortal fear of having their weaknesses publicly exposed to say nothing of the fear that their dispositions may cost their bosses patronage and may cost them their jobs.
On the other hand there are well-mannered – not well-qualified but well-mannered – young men and women who at least seek to provide Good Customer Service. Their attitude derives, invariably, from good training in the home, particularly the kind of training that insists on being polite to people. That may not be the be all and end all of Good Customer Service; the point is, however, that their predispositions render them eminently trainable.
The standards that are set in the workplace are critical to the creation of a regimen of Good Customer Service. There is, frankly, no shortage of coarse, rude and downright vulgar proprietors of business places in the commercial sector. They treat their staff like dirt and really do not expect a great deal of the people who work for them. These are businesspeople who are driven purely by the almighty dollar who assume that whatever the standard of the service that they provide people will patronize their businesses anyway and who fail to see any nexus whatsoever between Good Customer Service and improving patronage.
On the face of the available evidence they are perfectly correct. The fact is that once the price is right some customers will endure all of the hostility and rudeness that some business places dish out. This, as much as anything else has given rise to an attitude among some business places that says to the customer if you do not buy it someone else will, anyway.
I believe that some businesspeople are entirely to be blamed for the poor standard of Customer Service that their businesses provide. Apart from the fact that they refuse to invest one red cent in improving service quality their own attitudes to their employees do not help. There are plenty of instances of quality of treatment of employees that are so degrading, so overwhelmingly dehumanizing, that the hapless employees lose all sense of self-esteem and we cannot seriously be expected to respect other people and their concerns if our own working lives are no more than a continuum of humiliation and ill-treatment. The next time you venture into downtown Georgetown you must examine closely the expressions on the faces of the hired salespeople. I have seen expressions of despair, anger, diminished self-esteem, fear and a perpetual sense of nervousness which, I believe, derives in many instances from relentless employee harassment that does untold damage to their self-esteem and makes it difficult for them to provide quality service to consumers. The truth is that very often these poor, downtrodden souls are so taken up with their own miserable circumstances that what they do constitutes no more than going through the motions.
I believe that employee harassment in areas of the private sector – and by this I mean physical and mental cruelty, verbal abuse and sexual harassment are far more prevalent than we suspect. I believe, too, that the perpetrators of these indignities are protected from consequences by victims’ fears of losing their jobs and by a wider institutional and societal indifference to this particular problem. Here, I believe that it is a question of the power of the perpetrator, and the weakness of the victim. It is a fearful dilemma in which to find oneself and I believe that the Ministry of Labour need to develop the specialist capacity to investigate and take action to bring an end to this problem.
There is an unbreakable nexus between Good Customer Service and improved consumer awareness. Too few people are aware of their rights as customers and the reciprocal responsibilities of those who serve them. In my subsequent articles I will address, among other things customer rights both in Guyana and elsewhere and the enforcement of those rights.
Rights enforcement is a function of the authorities designated to perform those functions. If people do not know where to go to have their concerns addressed or if the responsible agencies are not sufficiently pro-active, the indignities that pass for Customer Service in our country will persist.
Part of the problem with Customer Service is that the quality of service that we receive is a reflection of the very nature of our society. The truth is that as general rule our society appears to have surrendered itself to low standards……. of inter-personal communication, dress, deportment and personal conduct. In some areas of service provision coarseness and vulgarity are accepted as par for the course. We accept them as though they were virtues.
In my next article I will draw attention to some of the more common examples of poor Customer Service that obtain in the commercial sector. I also intend to address issues of Customer Service in state agencies.
