By Dr Renate Volpe

I have recently had occasion to encounter a series of unacceptable service standards in SA.

Examples abound.

• It's four years since I sold my home, I still do not have my electricity deposit back. Endless attempts have been made to redeem the deposit. The cost of pursuing the outstanding amount in time, telephone calls and visits is ridiculous. I wonder just how many people simply give up trying. I can’t help asking myself whether this is what government departments count on?
• I have a tax credit outstanding from 2002 that I am battling to be credited with. Double standards pervade, I get penalized if I don’t pay my tax pronto.
• We as a small consultancy rendered professional services to a government department. Come payment time they refused to pay us, unless we provide a vat clearance certificate. We checked on our vat status and promptly paid in the current amount. We have now been on hold for two months waiting for the vat clearance certificate. So, in brief, we as a small consultancy are the ham in the sandwhich. The service has been rendered, the vat has been paid, and we are none the richer, continuing to waste our time and effort trying to get what was ours rightly in the first place.
• Our bandwidth provider simply cut off our services without notifying us. (Although they undertake to do so timeously via e mail.) Upon enquiry their call centre gave us a full weeks run around, telling us, that it was a technical fault on our side. Considering that our business is 100% dependant on e mail this cost us directly in income and productivity, never mind the frustration, or cost of a technician on our side. Only when I escalated the enquiry to management did they note we had been cut off due to an excessive and unusual use of our band with. The final straw! They refused to reconnect us, so that we could make the necessary payment to them, recommending that we go to the bank and make the deposit. (This in spite of having a consistent and clean payment record with them for an extended period.) It remains to be seen whether this provider will come to the party with compensation.
• To my mind Call Centers in particular are the service scourge of modern society. People are trained like automatons. The moment difficulties present, which are out of the ordinary, and require some thought, the service people are completely lost. Instead of escalating the query to a more skilled person timeously, they give you the beaurocratic run around.

The examples of poor or hopeless service are endless:

• Having car repair done, and the work is inferior?
• Buying a new article from a shop, to find that it does not work, and has to be returned?
• Having service people in your home, who do a stick and paste job, take the money and run?
• Redeeming an inheritance for your child from the guardian fund?
• Having an insurance payout done, inevitably your paperwork is mislaid or the payout is postponed for some obtuse reason?

All of the above have the following in common:

• A basic lack of service intelligence
• A lack of respect for the customer
• A total lack of accountability
• A lack of responsibility
• A lack of personal pride

So! We say, in despair. What can we as individuals or organizations do about this decrepit state of affairs?

Each and every one of us needs to take responsibility.

Employees:

• Those in call centers need to be taught to listen for the exception to the rule and intervene appropriately.
• Those in government need to find their personal sense of pride and start doing a decent days work. They need to stop giving people the run around, and make it a point to follow up on a query until it is closed. Supervisors should focus on closing all queries within an allocated period of time.

The State does not let itself be held accountable to the people it’s designed to serve.

Means to rectify this would be:

• Having a scorecard for government and granting annual increases based solely on performance.
• Having stats and information on backlogs, complaints that are released to the public.
• Having public ombudsmen and women who will provide visibility about who is complaining about what.

It cannot be denied that our national productivity is being damaged daily by the hundreds of thousands of man-hours being lost fighting incompetent service.

Customers:
Those on the receiving end as customers and consumers must learn, not to throw in the towel and walk away saying it’s not worth the trouble, the time the energy, or the effort. Doing this is as bad as buying stolen goods, we are endorsing unacceptable behavior.

It is worth your while! It is your money, you are entitled to follow up your query until it is resolved, return faulty goods, and you don’t have to do so apologetically either. If we all stood up and refused to tolerate inferior standards of service, it would make a difference.

I am not advocating that we the customers become the perpetrators and behave in an aggressive and insulting manner to those who provide service. I suggest we remain firm, factual, polite and display unrelenting tenacity. That we follow up. That we keep written records, and that we simply refuse to accept inferior service.

Providers:
Poor service is unacceptable. Over charging clients, and incomplete jobs is tantamount to dishonesty. Never mind that its stupid considering that one only has one reputation, and that its far cheaper keeping a client, than getting an new one.

A basic principle in the service industry should be to “Under promise and over deliver.” Earning a meager salary is not a sufficient reason for displaying poor attitude or rendering scummy service. A sense of meaning and purpose can be found by doing a good day’s work, by bringing a smile to a customers face. Any supervisor worth their weight will take note over time a reward you well.

Let’s start practicing for 2010 now! Let’s stand proud! Yes! We’ve a lot to learn, a long way to go. But let us each take responsibility for our little part. There are only positives to look forward to. The levels of anger and frustration in our society will reduce; the African warmth and people centric friendliness for which we in South Africa are famous will ignite vivid flames beyond our wildest imagination. Together we can lead the way.

Viva South Africa!