I have been a little tardy in acclaiming the very articulate analysis by Jacquelyn Hamer, over the past weeks, of the state of customer service in Guyana (‘Customer Service and the psychology of acquiescence’ Stabroek Business, November 13). I would like to think that the majority of readers would empathise with her description of the experiences and examples quoted.
I have personally always asserted the view that training and/or rehabilitative exercises for low-level frontline customer service providers is a chimera, and does not improve anything except the employer’s (superficial) consciousness that something was attempted in the particular organisation.
It is so patently foolhardy to expect employees who operate in indifferent, if not hostile, environments to be consistently positive in their approach to customers, while experiencing stressors in the workplace they themselves are struggling to understand.
The army of small businesses which cater for sales of volumes of cheap products to unsuspecting and undiscriminating purchasers of limited income, are no less arrogant than their predecessors whose attitude in availing desperate queues of scarce commodities reduced the latter to the state of ‘acquiescence’ referred to in the last part of Hamer’s article.
That there exists a historical ‘hangover’ of acquiescence from earlier times is surely subject to more critical analysis, as is arguably the assertion that what currently obtains is the ignorance of the product or service being provided on the one hand, complemented by the ignorance of the recipient of what to expect, on the other hand.
This is remarkably the case in the local hospitality sector which thrives on providing mediocre services to the arrivées equipped only with the ability to spend, but essentially under-informed about quality and standards. So that poor and even insolent waiting services go unheeded by the unknowledgeable, and are eventually inflicted on those who have experienced better.
This writer has often experienced the genuine surprise expressed by such service managers when particular deficiencies have been reported – not so much from an individual perspective, but more importantly from that of the reflection on the standards of the hospitality sector – when compared by tourists with their counterparts in the Caribbean.
For example, it is not an unusual (mal)practice for the attendant to stretch across the table than serve from the side. The trouble is the nouveau arrivée acquiesces to this kind of sloppiness simply because he/she does not know. Either will probably wonder about the guest at the next table complaining about a similar type of behaviour not acceptable in the rest of the region.
Yours faithfully,
E B John
