The To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd (TTAL), in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (THTI) and in­ter­na­tion­al award-win­ning cus­tomer ser­vice leader, Up­lift­ing Ser­vice, re­cent­ly of­fi­cial­ly launched the Tourism In­dus­try Cus­tomer Ser­vice Train­ing (TIC­ST) pro­gramme by host­ing a Cus­tomer Ser­vice Lead­ers Fo­rum which took place last week.

The TTAL said, “this three-year be­spoke pro­gramme aims to im­prove the qual­i­ty of cus­tomer ser­vice de­liv­ered at all key con­tact points in To­ba­go to a stan­dard equiv­a­lent to those ex­pe­ri­enced in so­phis­ti­cat­ed mar­kets, des­ti­na­tions and fa­cil­i­ties glob­al­ly, there­by im­prov­ing the life of To­bag­o­ni­ans and adding val­ue to the tourism prod­uct and en­hanc­ing the vis­i­tors’ ex­pe­ri­ence, which is ex­pect­ed to be achieved through the train­ing of both pub­lic and pri­vate front-line staff, their su­per­vi­sors and man­agers in cus­tomer ser­vice de­liv­ery and cus­tomer ser­vice man­age­ment re­spec­tive­ly.”

In this re­gard, key lo­cal in­flu­encers and ser­vice in­dus­try lead­ers with lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ties were iden­ti­fied and trained to com­prise the ser­vice lead­ers co­hort.

This trained co­hort will then work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with THTI and Up­lift­ing Ser­vice to fa­cil­i­tate train­ing through­out the is­land, through the TIC­ST– Ser­vice Lead­ers Fo­rum.

The work­shop was suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­ered over three days cater­ing to CEO’S, man­age­ment lev­el and su­per­vi­sors.

Con­vey­ing open­ing re­marks at the of­fi­cial launch cer­e­mo­ny of the pro­gramme on No­vem­ber 13, at the Her­itage Pavil­ion, Pi­geon Point, To­ba­go, TTAL’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Ali­cia Ed­wards stressed the fact that cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing must start from man­age­ment.

“Cus­tomer ser­vice and cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing do not op­er­ate in a vac­u­um. It ex­ist and thrives on­ly when the lead­ers of or­gan­i­sa­tions and busi­ness­es, sup­port and see the im­por­tance of cus­tomer ser­vice to their op­er­a­tions, staff, rep­u­ta­tions and to their prof­it-line,” Ed­wards stat­ed.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch, To­ba­go’s Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine re­mind­ed To­bag­o­ni­ans that cus­tomer ser­vice is nat­u­ral­ly in­side of them.

“We To­bag­o­ni­ans have cus­tomer ser­vice in­nate in us. You see it at every vil­lage har­vest, you see it amongst us at com­mu­ni­ty events, church­es, when we smile and when we em­brace each oth­er with warm hugs – it ex­ists in our nat­ur­al way of liv­ing.

“How­ev­er there seems to be some dis­con­nect be­tween what we know with that which we share with the tourist. We have to re-ed­u­cate our peo­ple and let them know that there is no strange sci­ence in good cus­tomer ser­vice, we have it al­ready in­side of us and how do we now trans­fer it to the vis­i­tor?

“There is a need for this train­ing be­cause there is al­ways a need for us to re-tool. Things that you knew all your lives some­times we do for­get, so this train­ing serves as a re­minder about who we are as a peo­ple and how love­ly and beau­ti­ful we are.” Far­ley not­ed.

Coun­cil­lor Tashia Bur­ris, Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion, in her re­marks at the launch re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing and de­vel­op­ment.

“This ser­vice lead­ers fo­rum is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fact that we are well aware of the need on our Is­land to en­hance ca­pac­i­ty among our peo­ple. Fur­ther, it is tes­ti­mo­ny that we are com­mit­ted to ro­bust and con­tin­u­ous mech­a­nisms that will pos­i­tive­ly trans­form our in­dus­try through our ser­vice providers, tourism work­ers and all those who, di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly, im­pact our sec­tor,” Bur­ris stat­ed.

Bur­ris al­so stat­ed; “We can­not de­ny the fact that tourism re­mains a main­stay in our de­vel­op­ment and eco­nom­ic frame­work and as such we must al­ways en­hance our com­pet­i­tive edge through train­ing and de­vel­op­ment.”