Written by Saeed Khalil
ECONOMIST and management training consultant, Joycelyn Williams has lamented the ‘poor’ quality of customer service in Guyana.

“You don’t have to look too hard [to see] that the average level of customer service in Guyana is poor,” she said during her address at a Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) seminar on customer service, held at the Pegasus Hotel last week.

According to Williams, a lecturer who teaches at the University of Guyana’s Department of Economics, customer service refers to “all interactions between a customer and a product or service provider at the time of sale, and thereafter.”
She explained that poor customer service is triggered by inefficient systems and leads “to long queues for relatively simple transactions; poor quality products on sale in our stores; poor or inadequate communication from public service providers, like electricity and water; shoddy treatment at restaurants and stores; and untrained and poor attention from staff especially in public offices; as well as inadequate attention communication and courtesies at hospitals both public and private.”

Williams acknowledged, however, that the need to improve customer service is becoming more widely understood recalling: “I recently met a medical doctor from one of our hospitals who said that she is charge of rolling out an entire programme to improve patients experience and customer satisfaction.”
The economist, who is also the Principal of the JTW Management Institute, saluted the GCCI for organising the seminar “to add impetus to this buzzing movement” to improve customer service.
“Moment of truth”
Due to stronger competition in every sector, each entity must now make improving customer experience a strategic priority, Williams said, asserting: “Every encounter with a customer is a moment of truth, because [at] that moment their perception of you, the employee or company representative and of the company is being tested.”
She intimated that because the services sector is fast becoming a crucial component of Guyana’s economy, good relations between providers and customers is important. She cited call centres and tourism as two fast growing services-oriented sectors in Guyana.
According to her, a decade ago, the number of tourists whom the country catered to numbered between70,000  and 80,000, but that number has since more than doubled with tourists now arriving from more countries than before. She pointed out too that in September Qualfon, the Mexican-owned company which runs the largest call center in Guyana announced expansion plans that will see the company employ an additional 6,000 employees within the next five years.
“The sale and consumption of services involves more person to person contact than the sale and consumption of goods, and so the attitudes, style, behavioral patterns of those delivering service is more important than for the sale of goods,” she reasoned.
Customer experience beating product excellence
To illustrate her point, she referenced the case of the Cleveland Clinic, a 1,200-bed Ohio-based medical facility renowned for pioneering medical procedures such as open heart bypass, face transplant, and deep brain stimulation to treat psychiatric disorders. According to Williams, the hospital, for most of its history, had focused on medical issues and had received high rankings for medical care, but in 2008 the Clinic received very poor ratings for its patient experience from the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“Its ranking was just as a mid-way hospital,” she said, adding: “Key issues of concern were staff responsiveness and room cleanliness, quietness near the patients’ room at night, doctors’ communication skills, [and] nurses’ communication skills.”
The CEO of Cleveland realised he could no longer rely on the medical reputation of the hospital to continue attracting patients, Williams said, noting that what came out from the rankings was that patient/customer experience was beating medical excellence to attract patients.
“By taking a number of steps over three years the Clinic transformed itself, [and] its overall ranking of patient satisfaction jumped from average to among the top 8% of the 4,600 hospitals [surveyed],” Williams asserted, adding: “Hospital executives from all over the world now flock to Cleveland to study the Clinic practices and to learn how it changed.”
“The account hold lessons for all firms and organizations that have to compete by creating a superior experience for customers,” she concluded.