Final Installment
By Jackie
This is my final article in what has been a lengthy series on Customer Service. In the main I want to use this installment to address the issue of change, both from the standpoint of why it is important that we cultivate higher standards of customer service as well as the kinds of training and orientation that we may consider.
Customer Service as a
nation-enhancing virtue
I have sought in previous articles in this series to make the point that customer service has to do with more, much more than the politeness or otherwise of the store attendant in the commercial centre or the attitude of the clerk administering the processing of passport applications or the clearance of goods by the Customs Department. It has to do with the quality of the environment afforded by the efficiency or otherwise of the service provision standards everywhere, including, for example, those of the various municipalities. This is an excellent example since the quality of the service that these provide in terms of physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, drainage and irrigation canals, garbage disposal etc has an effect on the society as a whole. That effect can be decidedly positive or downright depressing depending on the quality of service that is forthcoming. Viewed from the standpoint of the role of the municipalities it becomes clear that the quality of customer service impacts on the national psyche and on considerations that have to do with the physical well-being and levels of economic progress in the society. Accordingly, there are a number of critically important reasons why there ought to be a national preoccupation with higher standards of customer service.
Where do we begin?
The question is, where do we begin? The current preoccupation with Customer Service training at the level of the workplace assumes, incorrectly in my view, that the recipients of such training are necessarily responsive to the information that is imparted to them. I believe, regrettably, that, both, as service givers and service providers we have become set in our ways. By this I mean that we have grown sufficiently accustomed to both giving and receiving poor, often appalling service and so have come to see it as an accepted norm. A few days – or at best weeks – of coaching from a manual that focuses primarily on issues of politeness and engaging smiles cannot seriously be expected to alter a trend that has come to be accepted over long years of practice. Changing the prevailing culture of low standards of delivery and acceptance of customer service can only be accomplished if service givers and service providers, simultaneously, place a higher value on the quality of service they are prepared to give and receive. It is, first a job for the society as a whole, a pursuit that seeks to effect changes in attitude at the various levels of the society and, one, moreover, that must be supported by the application and enforcement of rules and committed and effective leadership.
The process of orientation – not formal training but everyday orientation – must begin at the various layers of the society, ………… at the levels of the home, the school and the community.
One of the single, most glaring, most depressing examples of what we are prepared to offer and accept as customer service is to be seen in the condition of our capital, the piles of garbage, the filth-infested drains and canals, the pot-holed roads, the overgrowth of dense bush, the derelict buildings and the various other deficiencies and eyesores. These phenomena are offensive not only because they exist but also because as recipients of that quality of service we accept it mostly without murmur. Whether or not we blame the municipal authorities, whether or not we dismiss these deficiencies as resulting from a lack of finances, the fact is that they persist because neither the givers nor the receivers of these services feel a sufficiently strong sense of the need to apply corrective measures. Even in the face of the limitations/deficiencies of the municipal authorities, for example, there is really no good reason why as people with a sense of personal pride and a mindfulness of high standards, we cannot take personal responsibility for the cleanliness and good order of the drains, parapets and sections of pavement in the immediate vicinity of our homes, Community Centres, business premises etc. While that still leaves a great deal more for the municipal authorities to do I am convinced that modest individual and collective self-help efforts can make a difference. I have seen examples of this kind of effort in communities here in our capital and they have made a difference. The truth is that on the whole we appear to have resigned ourselves to the state of our communities and our capital to the extent where we appear not to be in the least discomfited by our surroundings.
The critical point here is that higher standards of customer service must evolve out of a regimen of standards-setting that begins in the home. A sense of the importance of good order in the community begins, inevitably with a sense of good order in the immediate vicinity of the home. If this may appear to be a trite observation, it is my view that training, formal training, that is, in the discipline that is known as Customer Service is unlikely to benefit either service givers or service providers. As a matter of personal orientation, if we have not, as a general rule, been grounded in the virtues of setting high standards of giving and receiving customer service, then the relatively modest efforts that are applied at the various workplace levels cannot be expected to bear any significant fruit.
Education
The fact that the vast majority of Guyanese receive some level of formal education, the Ministry of Education is probably as well-placed as any other institution to provide some measure of orientation that contributes to an appreciation of the virtues of good customer service. I believe the provision of quality education must transcend those disciplines that are an accustomed part of the schools curriculum to embrace values that lay the foundation for a more fundamental appreciation of high standards. Curriculum-based orientation must imbue students with an appreciation of the importance of taking responsibility for the maintenance of high standards in the school environment. There is nothing wrong
with school-based projects that recruit children (and parents) into assignments that have to do with care of school furniture and aspects of the maintenance of the general surroundings. Moreover, the business-based curriculum has to go beyond the fundamentals of conventional commercial activity and enter into areas like the delivery of high standards of service. If our children can graduate from school and into the world of work with a sense of what it means to give and to enjoy high standards of service they are far more likely to ‘buy into’ whatever subsequent re-enforcement they may encounter through formal workplace training.
Customer Service as a
national institution
Laying the foundation for the creation of a national sensitivity to higher standards of service is unlikely to succeed without the kind of leadership that derives from an appreciation of the nexus between higher service standards and the qualitative enhancement of the society as a whole. While specialized service standards training must be tailored to suit the particular requirements of the various public and private sector organizations, management programmes at the higher education level must address customer service as a curriculum-based discipline. Similarly, Human Resources departments at the various workplaces need to pay far more attention to recruitment and training policies that focus attention on the continual enhancement of the capacity of its employees to deliver the highest possible quality of customer service.
In the final analysis, however, I believe that training can realize only limited accomplishments in pursuit of higher standards of customer service. The challenge, as I have already mentioned is located in changing the attitudes of both the service givers and the service providers. What is required to accomplish this is the creation of what I would describe as a national mind-set that derives from making the connection between higher standards of customer service and a better quality of national life on the whole. Getting there requires the creation of a climate that is driven by a combination of value-oriented persuasion, strict rules, legislation and visionary leadership. Arising out of this conceptual appreciation of the real value of higher standards of customer service we can begin to fashion a national programme that presses the various societal institutions including the home, the community, the school, the municipal authorities, the state entities and the private sector into service. Nothing, however, can be accomplished without the creation of a prior appreciation of why we do what we do.
