Put customers at centre of public service

This past week was Customer Service Week. The week is an opportunity to reflect on the quality of services one provides to their customers.

Colleagues in the private sector know the value of customers due to the impact that they have on their bottom line.

If customers aren’t treated well, they will stop patronising your facility and utilising your services. Consequently, customer service is key to business.

The question, however, is what customers mean beyond just profit. This question is particularly key for public service and the non-profit sector. Way too often these groups operate with little regard for their customers.

Several years ago, the public service introduced the service charter as a concept to enhance focus on service delivery for customers and thus ensure that they are central to decision-making and implementation.

It is important to interrogate the extent to which public service organisations have changed their processes, attitudes and performance to respond to customers.

A starting point must be an objective determination of who the customer is. This may not always be too apparent to all in an organisation.

A public agency may cooperate as if the employees are the customers. The reality is that the customers are the members of the public who utilise the services that the institution discharges.

For the courts, they are the lawyers and the litigants who come to court. For schools, it is the students and their parents.

The question may not be very easy for the legislative arm of government. However, the customers cannot be the members. It must be their electorate and the larger citizenry. This clarity helps to ensure that processes and systems put in place deliver for the intended and not surrogate beneficiaries.

Second is the recognition that public service is a constitutional right and not a favour. While for the private sector, the customer can move to the next business if dissatisfied, for the public service that option is not always open to the customers.

Public institutions are funded by taxpayers’ money and in certain instances are the only entities in existence to provide the eservice in question.

It, therefore, behoves those who work in the public service to keep this in mind as they serve customers. The relationship is one of trust and responsibility.

The quality of our development is predicated on the health of our institutions and the services they deliver. This is predicated on many things, including the budgetary allocations, the prudent use of the resources at the disposal of the institutions and the quality of leadership.

Way too often we forget to think about the relationship between these institutions and their customers. A majority of public sector institutions don’t undertake customer satisfaction surveys.

This requires changing so that those that seek services can give honest feedback on their experiences and suggestions on how to improve the relationship.

Any time that an institution is developing systems and rules, it should do so from the perspective of those they seek to serve and not just that work there.

A customer-service approach will enable deliberation on the conditions required for delivery of quality and timely services to customers.

It will ensure that inputs such as staff who are motivated and highly remunerated, a conducive working environment and adequate infrastructure are put in place to enable delivery of services to customers.

The Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated to us that service is not about infrastructure. It is not the quality of buildings and offices that is primary.

It is the responsiveness of our institutions, the extent to which they are willing to go out of their way to ensure that their core functions are not disrupted even during challenges such as a pandemic. This requires agility, commitment and consistency.

The Customer Service Week should act as a reminder to all public servants that service to the customer is what makes a difference in our institutions.