Recently, a friend told me the story of a policeman who stopped his vehicle, during heavy thundershowers, to assist an elderly lady across the street. Apparently, the lady had been standing on the sidewalk for a while, hesitant to attempt jumping across a wide swath of floodwater. This story reminded me of a quote that says “a nation is judged by the way in which it treats its young and its elderly”.
In the same day, someone in an office mentioned that they had forgotten to call back a client and went on to say “no worries, she’ll (the client) realize that I don’t have an update if I don’t call her back”. This story reminded me of another quote that says “it takes months to win a customer and seconds to lose him or her”.
As I shared in the previous column, we are not doing well on the “customer delighting” scale and it looks like we’re not doing well on the “care” scale either. Whilst we are nowhere near being a failed state, we do have to heal our brokenness as a society. We do need to address, with haste, the underlying issues that preoccupy citizens’ minds and, in many cases, distract them from releasing the positive energy that is required to enable great service to become a way of life.
So how will our nation begin to heal itself, even as we attempt to compete in the global marketplace and to carve our space in a rapidly developing world? How do we replace “manicou” stares at the counter, with big smiles, warm, welcoming greetings and an end to end, exceptional customer experience, as a way of life?
We have to conquer three enemies. The first being an absence of focus on our grounding pillars of care, kindness and service at a national level. The second being the erosion of high standards of behaviour and thirdly, the absence of a coherent framework for creating a national service brand T&T, that is recognised and respected for best practice and world-class excellence.
A multi-pronged approach is required.
Firstly, to win at an internal, or national level, we will need to infuse the concept of “Care” as an intentional mandate across our society. “Care” needs to be taught in our schools, practised in our homes, institutionalised in our public institutions and rolled out in our workplaces. In short, we should consider bringing all of our civil society institutions, public institutions and private organisations together in a massive humanitarian effort that will restore our collective wellbeing and reposition us as a nation that “Cares”.
The greatest level of “Care” has to be executed by and experienced in our public institutions, such as our schools, hospitals, police stations, public utilities and government offices.
Citizen Care needs to be treated as a right and institutionalized as a high level, operating principle.
Alongside the care imperative, would be the need to rescue ourselves from the jaws of diminishing standards of behaviour which, at present, hold us under threat of entrapment.
Need I remind that we have begun our annual trek to that season of bacchanalia, when anything goes and everything is allowable in the name of “release”.
Of course, we don’t need to wait for Carnival to see the evidence of diminishing standards. We just have to peek into late coming logs at companies, stroll through offices to see how many persons are fixated on their mobile phones, notice how many employees of organisations are strolling through the streets in slippers, claiming that they are on “their time” whilst still dressed in the company’s uniform.
We just have to notice the heavily polluted coastlines and the photos of citizens posting with poached national birds.
In many ways, our culture imposes juxtapositions, allowing us to celebrate our creativity, warmth and friendliness, whilst creating tension in our relationship with the basics of service excellence.
We need to win at an external, or world level. World standards of operating are oblivious to a little nation like ours. We march to the global beat and it usually takes us two to three years to catch up with whatever is the latest trend in business and technology.
It’s an uneven playing field out there and, like everyone else, we’re facing the giants of commerce and attempting to achieve business success in an unforgiving, global marketplace.
Global is not just a description. It is the pitch at which business is now conducted, especially for Caribbean countries that are open for business to the world and serious about engaging the basics of service excellence.
As a developing nation, it is only when we reverse our comfort with mediocrity, create the uplift for high standards, reset our “care” pillar and plug our porous style of conducting business, can we say that we are not only open but also ready, to do business with the world.
Dawn Richards
Principal Consultant
drichards@draconsultingtt.com
www.draconsultingtt.com