My experience also shows that many organizations lack the follow-up mechanism to evaluate the post training impact the learning had made to achieve the desired outcome
Veteran marketer Deepal Sooriyaarachchi recently sat down for a chat with the Customer Care Guru of Sri Lanka, Dhammika Kalapuge. Some excerpts from the interview:
Q: I know you are very passionate in whatever you do. What make you tick in your journey of promoting customer care?
Desire to be cared for is a universal human need. We all yearn for it from ‘womb’ to the ‘tomb’. Caring is an absolutely essential requirement that all human beings need, and it is something that can be easily given by the sensible use of common sense alone.
However, with the rapid and continuously diminishing of ‘human values’ over time, as seen now, we find that this aspect of caring concern has become no more common in the present-day society, especially in various organizations whether they are public or private. In my observation two main reasons for this are; over dependence on technology and emphasizing short term results over long term relationships resulting in diminishing of human touch.
In this situation of winning the ‘heart share’ of the customer being such a pressing and a critical need, it inspired me to initiate and also to propagate a nationwide ‘customer service’ program.
Q: Why do you feel that customer service is so important for the survival and sustenance of any business?
Unless a business is run purely on the lowest cost as a proposition it is essential that each business offers some kind of a differentiation to be competitive. The tangible aspects can be copied so easily. One of the most difficult yet easiest to offer is distinctly different customer experience.
My intention therefore was to fill this gap in the corporate sector by designing and facilitating programs mostly with concentrated emphasis on the aspect of customer service.
Q: You have been doing this for over two decades now and during this period of time; you must have addressed thousands of people and worked with many organizations. What are your key positive and negative observations when you consider in particular the service culture in Sri Lanka?
The positive factor is that an increasingly large number of entities have realized the importance of educating their staff on customer service. The companies now strongly believe that the greatest asset they all possess is the human capital. In the process, if any company wants to thrive in their business, directing the attention of the entire human capital towards the business goal is now considered as an utmost priority. Therefore, organizations currently invest a considerable amount of resources on training and developing its people. That is how I happen to become so busy in fulfilling this need by conducting over 2,700 programs during the last two decades covering nearly 700 companies with well over 350,000 participants.
In reply to the second part of your question, in my humble opinion the efforts put in by the organizations during the past, in setting up and strengthening the service cultures in the country, had not derived the desired benefits to the fullest as yet.
Q: Why do you say that such efforts had not derived the fullest benefit so far?
I see many fundamental reasons for it. Out of them, I will speak about the two most crucial factors. Firstly, we define Service Culture as ‘Everybody in the entity consistently trying to create a unique experience of value that is highly appreciated by the recipient’. Everybody includes all employees of the organization, irrespective of their roles, goals and the levels should have a serious involvement in setting up the service culture.
Quite often, I see the training on customer service had become a bottom up approach rather than a top down initiative. The leadership of the enterprise must accept Customer Care as a strategic imperative. Then there will be the right emphasis and focus.
We often get feedback from the juniors who participate in our programs frequently requesting us to conduct such learning exercises beginning from their seniors.
The training should never be done for the sake of doing it or to fill a grid by the Training Manager to say that “I have achieved my annual KPIs”. No training initiative is effective unless the trainer identifies the real requirements of the entity and the needs of the trainee concerned.
Secondly, my experience also shows that many organizations lack the follow-up mechanism to evaluate the post training impact, the learning had made to achieve the desired outcome. As the saying goes, ‘what gets measured gets done’. In many instances line managers carry out the training need analysis of their staff and nominate staff for suitable programs to fulfill the training needs. Moreover, it is recommended that once a trainee returns after the program, the post-learning behavioral change in them should be evaluated using some appropriate method.
Thereafter, agree on at least three action steps that each staff member should implement as a result of participating in the program and incorporate them to the key results area in their annual objectives. Thereafter, managers are requested to do the needed follow-up with regard to staffs’ behavioral change at their annual appraisal and reward and recognize them accordingly.
The results from proper training interventions can come when three components come in place. Firstly, the trainer providing the required knowledge skills and shaping the attitude, secondly the trainee committing to internalize them and implement them at work and finally the supervisors checking whether this is being done.
Q: Service, as you say, is common sense, but for an organization to consistently deliver good service there must be alignment of People, Processes and Policies. How do you see the importance of these factors?
When customer service becomes a strategy there are three ‘P’s that have to work hand in glove. The ‘Policies’ or the so called ‘Rule-set’, the ‘Processes’ referred to as the ‘Tool-set’ and ‘People’ defined as ‘Mind-set’.
Q:. Where do you see the big challenges we need to address when it comes to the policies of an organization in setting-up a service culture?
Setting up a service culture begins with the organization’s business philosophy which in other words is called the ‘VISION’. What is the importance we truly give to the customer as a key stakeholder in the business? The company’s policy, is it purely targeted towards profit maximization or customer satisfaction? Or both? Many Japanese companies consider profit as only a by
product of their business activity. There are many successful Sri Lankan companies who follow a similar business policy saying that; ‘We better take care of the customers first so that in turn customers will take care of the company’.
Realizing the fact that all customers who deal with any business have a ‘lifetime value’, which is much higher than the initial transactional value, they have successfully managed to establish outstanding service cultures in their entities. That eventually has led them towards higher profitability earned solely by customer loyalty. The Ritz Carlton Hotel chains service policy is such that the empowerment given to every employee of their staff, at all levels, is to spend up to a limit of USD 2,000, to delight the customer. This can be cited as a classic example in this regard. Its service credo that, ‘We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,’ is embedded into their DNA so that every staff member is alert to use this empowerment judiciously without abuse.
A few of the Sri Lankan Government organization successfully fine-tuned their policies to give the importance to the public whom they serve. The Department of Immigration and Emigration is one of them. Having understood that they were mainly serving the expatriate Sri Lankan labor force, which incidentally bring in the highest foreign exchange earnings to the country and they need the facility of obtaining passports in a hurry, the Department promptly implemented a one-day service to cater for this pressing need. Sri Lanka is perhaps, one of the first countries in the region to have initiated such a system. Eventually, even the Department for Registration of Persons too followed suit by offering a similar one-day service
Q: How should the processes be fine-tuned to achieve this task?
Once the organization establishes a policy to set up an appropriate service culture, it has to be followed by putting the right ‘processes’ in place. In order to achieve this objective, if an organization follows a ‘policy’ that, “We will personalize our offer to the customer or we will look at customer convenience first,” the processes have to be fine-tuned accordingly. Obviously, a well-organized system support is needed to be installed to begin with.
My own personal experience in this regard is that I was able to obtain a passport within 23 minutes, and a new National Identity Card was received to my hand within two hours. All these was possible because the right process was in position at the right place at the right time.
Once I was on a flight and when the aircraft is about to taxi its way to the runway, a name of a couple was announced and they were asked to identify themselves to the closest crew member. In a short while, I observed that they were guided from economy class and seats were offered in the business class. When I clarified the reason for doing so, from the Leading Steward, I was informed that it was their wedding anniversary day and upgrading was done to make them feel special on this journey. I was also told that, once flight takes off, the couple will be served with a specially made cake as well. Although, this looks a simple act to the airline, it is going to be a memorable occasion or an experience to these two passengers. Thus enhancing their loyalty towards to the airline throughout their life.
To carry out this kind of acts the organizations should have a policy; in the first place; “Wherever possible we will make the customer special”. This had to be followed also with the right processes in place. Of course in this incident the iPad carried, by the Senior Steward, was linked to the airline’s CRM that had all the information about the passengers on board in that particular flight. Obviously, the aid of the system support too prompted the crew to act promptly to exceed the expectations of the passengers
Q: How do you assess the importance of the third – ‘people’ element’s contribution in achieving the needed service delivery?
Thirdly, the ‘People’ element in setting up a service culture plays a very important role. Here we are referring to people’s ‘mind-set’ commonly called the ‘attitude’. The biggest challenge facing the entities today is finding the right people and placing them at the right place so as to consistently offer the service at every point of interaction. We are in an era where; values are deteriorating, staff is lacking the sense of belonging, loyalty towards the workplace is diminishing, not thinking of building up a career in one place, the natural tendency to leave everything to ‘tech’ rather than ‘touch’ and the staff feeling that doing a job is an interlude between breakfast and dinner. Under these conditions, the manner of attuning such people’s mind-set to get the needed contribution from them towards setting up the required service culture has become a tall task today.
Q: What should organization do in attuning the mind-set of its people?
This is one of the reasons why we are kept so busy in our profession. Many organizations in their training brief very often request us to ‘fine-tune’ the ‘mind-set’ of the new recruits. It is not an easy task to do, especially when we find that the groups of people are coming from highly sophisticated backgrounds bring various interests along with them. This is one of the reasons why we often request senior management, while recruiting staff, to abide by the important rule; that staff should be ‘hired for the attitude and train them for the aptitude’.
On the basis of a casual reflection of our own individual experiences, we could always spot the result of dedicated human intervention in the achievement of a ‘customer delight’ often happens when there is a thoughtful execution of a dedicated service rendered enthusiastically. An organization may possess the appropriate policies and the necessary process support systems in operation but if the staff in employment is not passionately involved, all efforts will end up in vain.
Q: Do you think that soft skills training alone can help to achieve the needed capability for staff to perform in providing a good service?
Soft skills training is considered as a ‘quick fixed’ method to provide the required knowledge, skills and the right spirit or the positive attitude to perform. However, it does not necessarily guarantee results unless, as mentioned before, the entity has installed a total strategic approach towards setting up a service culture in the organization.
With regard to the people element, organization’s policy towards its staff, in aspects such as, recruitment, orientation, training, recognition, rewarding, retaining, empowering and encouraging etc. play a significant contribution.
As a trainer, I have observed that the staffs who are with dedication with the right passion always contribute to drive the organization to greater heights in customer service. Even if there is a need for an entity to change their policies and processes, towards customer orientation, it should be initiated by its ‘people’. Despite the fact that we are in the era where, ‘digital experience’ is given a top priority, my belief is that human intervention continues to have a significant role to play in conceptualizing and delivering customer friendly solutions, even with the ingress of rapid technological innovations.
Q: I think some individuals have a natural inclination to provide better service as compared with others. Can we deliver good service by ensuring proper systems and capabilities alone? If not what are the specific attributes one must look for when choosing persons to deliver customer care?
Some people have an inborn aptitude to serve others with extra ordinary gentle care. Such individuals, by nature enjoy doing a job, as a vocation. They are considerate enough to treat a ‘human being’ as a ‘human being. To serve people, by way of occupation, as a means of living they regard as the greatest opportunity they have gained through destiny. Surely, delivering good service can be done, by having the needed systems in place and providing training for the staff to acquire the required knowledge, skills and the right mind-set. This task becomes much easier for the entities, if at the point of recruitment itself , if appropriate action is taken to identify whether the potential candidates possess the basic attributes such as; positive spirit, friendliness, compassion, activeness, sense of belonging, farsightedness and self-drive; all of these being essential prerequisites in providing a delightful service.
Q: Do you see any gaps in the current education system that somehow emphasize individual vs. the community contributing towards children becoming more selfish thus customer care become an artificial act?
It is my strong belief that any education system must target towards building a ‘strong character’ rather than giving only a mere ‘title based qualification’ to the younger generation. Unfortunately, the parents who are caught in the rat race, during the last few decades, have given priority to their children to excel in formal qualifications with much less emphasis laid on the development of their emotional bonding with one another.
This has resulted today in building up selfishness amongst children from their primary level of education upwards. In the process they are at a loss to understand and realize the fact that later on in life they have to play a vital role for the advancement of the community at large. The essence of this commitment begins with teamwork and selfless sacrifice.
Simon Sinek, the British-American author, motivational speaker and organizational consultant, in one of his presentations on ‘Millennial in the Workplace’ elaborated with few more comprehensive reasons, for the manifestation of nasty behavior of some of present day’s individuals. He says that “Today’s millennial is Tough to manage, Accused to be entitled, Narcissistic, Unfocused and Lazy”. It is obvious that all these attributes, either singularly or collectively drives one towards this despicable introvert behavior.
When I conduct programs to academic staff of many schools, some teachers often suggest that such learning on customer care should be included as a subject in the school curriculum. Students with basic insight into this subject may eventually develop a behavior pattern to care for each other with empathy.
Q: When we speak of customer care, we tend to imagine only what happens between individuals during times of contact with each other on person to person or rather face to face basis. What about other interactions such as a phone call, email, a letter, etc., where the involvement is not rigidly personal?
Whatever the service one provides using whichever medium, we have to understand that finally it is a human being who is at the receiving end. Therefore, in the act of offering a service, it is of paramount importance to consider that the customer is a person with emotions and feelings, always right and design the solution accordingly. Moreover, keep in mind that the process has to be designed in a simplified manner which is user friendly to any customer.
When companies are investing in technology to enhance its efficiency, in service delivery, one has to understand the fact that technology is ‘an enabler’, and not ‘the enabler’. Obviously, technology is an enabler of growth. Nevertheless, it is only as powerful as the people who are trained to use it effectively. The strongest ‘enabler’ in an organization’s performance is the service culture which is established by its ‘people’. Whilst investing in technology, the aspect of educating the staff on how to use it in the most appealing and simplified manner to the customer should also be given due emphasis. The more skilled the staff is in using the technology properly, it is more likely that the entity is bound to achieve greater success.
Q: If we are to improve our service culture what are the key national level initiatives you would recommend?
Service is not a subject that is taught in any school. Extending customer service is something that can be provided through the use of common sense even though, as mentioned before, common sense is so sparingly found in the society today. At present there is an overall deterioration of ‘values’ amongst many societies in all countries throughout the globe. Environment is changing so fast that within the spell of every one and half minutes there is a novel innovation coming to the market place. In such an environment, customer expectations are escalating every moment and staff are not geared to follow suit accordingly.
As a result, the important aspect of giving emphasis to the ‘human touch’ through service, over the years, had not grown up to the required standards on par with the rising expectations of the customer.
Many believe that the biggest challenge every entity is facing today is how well ‘Y’ generation or the ‘millennial’ mind-set can be attuned towards providing a good service. The key challenge of the top management today is to create an environment to prepare people for the future which is so uncertain and unpredictable.
In such an environment, a national level initiative is needed particularly to a country like ours, where the economy is mostly dependent on the service sector. The entities have to carry out ‘service educational’ programs to its staff with utmost priority. There is a significant difference between ‘service training’ and ‘service education’ programs. In ‘service training’ a person is advised as to “What to do; act in a particular way in a given situation”. Whereas, in the ‘service educational’ programs the emphasis is on the aspect of conditioning the mind, “How to think of what to do; create more value through attuning the mind-set and improving the skill-set”.
Traditional ‘service training’ courses in general dealt with providing some demonstrable skills needed to overcome a situation. What we need today is to go beyond that and think creatively to apply the learning so as to add more value to customers in a given situation. This can be done only through ‘service educational’ programs. If the staff is given the proper ‘service education’ they will be capable of meeting any challenging situation using the basic principles they have mastered in order to create more value to the customers. In 2005 Singapore initiated at national level a campaign called ‘Go the Extra Mile for Service’ (GEMS) to raise the service standards in the country. This campaign really achieved the desired great success within the stipulated time period.
Have we ever given emphasis at national level, either by public or private sector entities to provide such educational programs to the employees? This question needs to be given due consideration today. There are noteworthy initiatives taken by some government institutes. To cite an example the National Human Resources Development Council of Sri Lanka had taken a great interest in conducting courses to the public sector employees on ‘service education’. Private sector entities do invest substantially on such educational programs, but during periods of economic distress, the tendency is to curtail its training and development expenses. Although affordability can be a matter of concern in hard time, this curtailment deserves to be reviewed thoroughly in terms of priority and vital importance.
Q: As we know, at present Sri Lanka and many other countries globally are facing tough economic conditions. How do you look at the importance of training in such a volatile market condition?
It’s a fact that when the economy is bad, sales are bound to be low due to the limited buying power arising out of lack of disposable income. This in turn will lower the morale of the staff as they fail to achieve targets and forgo incentives.
Carrying out service educational programs will help to keep staff motivational levels up. Moreover, when the customer is also extra cautious about the monies spent, when they perceive that more value creation takes place through the service provider, the customer is bound to make a favourable purchase decisions. Furthermore, it will enhance customer loyalty to the entity, so that once the economy improves the business can depend to some extent on the customers who they have already captured to get him in ‘one more time’ to do business. Eventually it will lead to develop a ‘lifetime value’ from the customer.
Q: Any final thought you wish to share with the business sector on this subject of customer service.
In building up a caring nation serving one to another becomes very important. We get this education to a greater extent from our religions. We are a country where parents encourage their children from childhood onwards to follow the learning of our own religion which obviously all speak about compassion.
Moreover, cash rich business entities whilst earning good profits should take a lead in setting up the great service culture in their respective organisations. It is beneficial to its customers, by and large to the society. I believe that any entity, society or country must develop not only economically but with proper ‘human values’ as well. I wish to have the following quotation as a thought to ponder; “If you want to give a great customer experience you have to align your culture and the way you reward your staff. None of customers facing staff have sales targets or sales bonuses – their rewards and bonuses are based purely on their customer satisfaction scores” said by Anthony Thompson, Chairman and Co- founder of Metro Bank in United Kingdom.