The Public Sector and the question of Customer Service
Jacquelyn Hamer
The culture of customer service in the public sector is a microcosm of that which obtains in the wider society. Both the public and private sectors recruit their employees from the same pool of job-seekers; from the same social environment, the same cultural background and the same educational background. Both sets of employees take more-or-less the identical habits to the workplace.
In my last article I sought to address some issues relating to the role of the work environment in shaping the Customer Service culture. There, I dealt at some length with the problem of oppressive ‘bosses’ and the way in which they impact on employee attitudes and, by extension, on the quality of Customer Service that is delivered. Whether we accept it or not unhappy, maladjusted employees generally make for poor service deliverers and I want to spend some time addressing this issue in the context of the Public Service of Guyana.
For all the hullabaloo associated with standards of health and safety at the workplace it is fair to say that on the whole public sector workplaces – particularly government Ministries – are not, generally, the most hospitable places in which to work. Old buildings, creaky wooden floors, piles of dusty files, dilapidated furniture and antiquated fans that do little to cool hot, dusty buildings are par for the course in some public sector agencies. Interestingly, these conditions generally do not obtain in the offices of Ministers and some senior public service managers. In other words it is those areas that are occupied by the ‘lesser’ employees who are responsible for providing service and the service-seekers that are the least hospitable areas.
The offices of the National Insurance Scheme and the Ministry of Labour are among those that could do with some ‘sprucing up.” The former, particularly, being one of the larger, busier service entities in the state sector really ought to be doing much more to make service seekers welcome. With respect to the latter entity I will only say that part of their mandate includes the enforcement of national safety and health standards.
I believe that state sector employees whose physical work environment is less than convivial usually take their physical conditions as an indication that their employers care little about their welfare. If, for example, a clerk in a state Ministry has to wait for a protracted period to have a requisition for a fan or a chair expedited that clerk, frequently, strikes a posture of passive resistance which, invariably impacts on his or her productivity. I shall describe this as the if I do not have the tools to work I cannot be expected to work attitude. I have seen it, it is real and it can have a devastating effect on Customer Service.
The twisted logic which dictates that the perceived delinquencies of the employer justifies the passing on of frustrations to the service seeker has become commonplace in the state sector. I am aware of a relatively recent case in which payments being made by a certain state sector organization were held up for a period of several minutes because the cashier’s chair had collapsed suddenly and she had refused to continue any disbursements until a replacement that she approved of was made available.
The sense of self-righteousness with which some public officers are imbued and which invariably seeps into their treatment of service seekers often derives from a perception that they are themselves being abused and that that justifies their passing on of that abuse. When you see a public officer in a state service entity bearing what seems to be an angry expression you have to wonder whether, perhaps, the problem is associated with the fact of his or her financial circumstances; perhaps it may be a question of bus fares of the children’s lunch, or their own lunch for that matter;; and however much you wish that this were not the case when problems of that magnitude preoccupy the service-provider the service will not be what it ought to be.
There used to be a time when entrants into the public service benefited from an induction programme. There also used to be a time when entry into the public service was based strictly on qualifications. I do not know what the situation is in relation to training these days. I am aware, however, that entry into the public service – and, I understand, the Cyril Potter College of Education – is no longer underpinned by the kind of strict academic criteria of years ago; and while I am by no means suggesting that sound academic qualifications necessarily make for good service-providers I am concerned that there appears to be a far lesser level of screening associated with entry into the public service these days.
At any rate, in today’s economic climate not too many qualified people are queuing up to join the public service and it seems to me that there is a greater need now to have training programmes in place to meet the needs of the less qualified entrants.
What has been lost too is that sense of pride in being a public servant that obtained several decades ago. That loss of a sense of pride is linked, partially, to the economics of people’s existence. Pride and status are not media of exchange that can bring you the satisfaction of your material needs and those younger people seeking to make career choices are acutely aware of the plight of public service pensioners who, after thirty three years of service to the nation are receiving what, in the context of today’s prices are no more than cents and pennies as pensions. So that we continue to attract under-qualified, de – motivated entrants into the public service and when you add to this the quality of their working conditions and what they are paid you have a recipe for poor Customer Service.
There is a sense of power, associated with the power of the state which some public servants arrogate to themselves and this is often used a weapon with which to pursue forms of behaviour that range from contempt and aloofness to the downright bullying of service-seekers. There are some public servants who work in service-providing positions who run their outfits like tyrants, often perceiving service-seekers as ignorant, ill-informed and a nuisance. There is, they believe, little wrong with ill-treating them.
The problem is that there is no real recourse for service-seekers who must deal with unwelcoming state agencies except to pull such political strings as they may have or else to grease a palm or two, here and there. It is, of course, no longer a secret that the payment of ‘backhanders’ generally results in an improved level of Customer Service. That is why some state agencies have become favorite places of work.
I do not accept that poor pay and otherwise deficient work situations justify poor customer service. Nonetheless, there are compelling arguments for a nexus between better public sector working conditions and improved customer service in the public sector. If you believe that people who feel disrespected and who, moreover, earn salaries that do not allow them to make ends meet will provide good Customer Service you are likely to believe just about anything. Nor do I care much for the argument that says that there used to be a time when the quality of Customer Service in the public sector was better despite the prevailing low levels of pay. Times have changed; it costs a great deal more to sustain oneself and one’s family and the time has long come for public sector reform to address the issue of building an improved public service that is structured along the lines of merit, qualifications and capacity and where these are matched by adequate levels of pay.
The employer, in this case the government, is really caught in a bind as far as improving customer service performance levels is concerned. Sub-standard working conditions and low pay levels serve as a kind of employee justification for not giving of their best. Inefficiency and ineffectiveness among public officers is all to frequently excused under the maxim that my employer gets just what he pays for; and while I restate the view that good Customer Service ought to be an automatic service – seeker expectation, the truth is that there are indeed cases where frustration engenders inefficiency.
I have found that there is usually very little discussion on this issue when the question of efficiency in the public service arises. I know of no contemporary Permanent Secretary, for example, for all their training in disciplines like Human Resource Management and the various other related courses being taught at the University of Guyana who has publicly and insistently advocated a serious examination of the nexus between poor employee performance and conditions of work. Indeed, it is as if public servants in many institutions are expected to motivate themselves, day-in-day-out to rise above the misery of their circumstances.
There are other issues that have to do with Customer Service in the Public Sector which are linked to institutional inefficiency rather than individual ineffectiveness. Variously, over time, service-seekers have complained about the exertions associated with expediting an import with the Customs and Trade Administration, securing a birth certificate from the Office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths or securing a passport from the Immigration Office. I have carefully contemplated the way in which these service agencies work and I have come to the conclusion that it is the nature of the bureaucracy, the operational paradigm within which those who serve those systems must work that create the problems. I have found that many public officers who work within cumbersome bureaucracies are displeased with their circumstances but can do little to change them. There are others too who revel in those circumstances since it affords them the opportunity to ‘run things,’ to play god.
I believe that the purpose of good Customer Service in the public sector would be more effectively served if the organizational systems that govern the work of public sector departments were more geared towards expediting things. We are told, sometimes, that the strict, suffocating rules that are put in place are designed to ensure that things ‘work.’ The problem is that there is fraud and glaring errors and slipups anyway and the systems are slow, ponderous and irritating into the bargain.
I do not believe that training alone can significantly improve Customer Service in the public sector. I believe that the extant conditions are part of a deep-seated culture and that the transformation must first be hatched in the minds of the policy-makers. Perhaps a good starting point might be for all of us to carefully contemplate how much we lose, mentally, physically and materially through inefficiencies in the public sector.