From time to time my readers send me notes about what I should tackle in my column. Once it's not too outrageous, I usually comply with the request if I can.A couple of weeks ago one reader asked me to highlight the way the elderly are treated when they go to government offices.I have to say that in my experience, most offices, government or private, are not especially unfriendly to the elderly. That is to say, people don't go out of their way to be mean to the elderly; the elderly simply get the same bad treatment as the rest of the population.
For example, once many years ago I took my mother to the bank. She was at that point suffering from dementia and unable to speak or write, but the supervisor insisted that the bank could not cash her pension cheque without her signature.I was in tears when I went back to the Social Welfare office to tell the caseworker what had happened.Thank God another bank was less inflexible and I was eventually able to cash the cheque without trouble elsewhere. But the fact that a banker would look at a woman who was clearly incapacitated and ask her to sign before accommodating her needs left me appalled.
Anyway, the following is what my reader asked me to highlight."My clients, especially the elderly, complain bitterly about the way they are treated by the ministries and institutions in the country.
"Seems that the staff at the ministries bark at the public."The ministry will initially give a list of requirements for the specific purpose. When the person returns and documents are being processed, if a mistake is observed on one or there is the realisation that a document is missing, the client or member of the public is despatched to get the documents in order. "When the client returns with what he thinks are the correct documents, if the public servant notices that something else is wrong or missing the person is despatched again. "They do not process everything and then give the public a list of what is wrong or missing.
"Sometimes in the middle of processing a member of the public the public servant will say it is time for her lunch break and leave the customer. "The elderly are treated with total disrespect everywhere."I am suggesting that people use these new cell phones to video tape and record the time they enter a place and the whole experience in these institutions. "I am also suggesting that the retired senior staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Protocol Division, and BWIA flight attendants be used to train these people."I agree with my reader in saying T&T's customer service, particularly in government offices, could be improved with training. However, I also acknowledge that it's not just civil servants with poor customer-service practices. How many times have I gone into a store and had to wait for the clerk to finish sending her WhatsApp message before she attended to me?
We have a national problem with customer service. Perhaps these ex-diplomats and flight attendants could be dispatched all over the country to attend to the shortcomings of clerks and CSRs everywhere. While that may be less than feasible, it's not too hard to ask people to be empathetic to the needs of their customers.When an elderly client comes in with obvious mobility challenges, is there not a way for the client's needs to be met without asking them to traverse the length and breadth of the city to collect certificates, affidavits and so on? Not everyone has relatives or carers willing or able to take up the slack. I wonder what happens to the folks who have nobody to do such running around for them?
In this age of Instagram and Twitter examples of poor customer service can go around the world twice before good customer service even puts his boots on (to paraphrase Mark Twain). But would it make a difference? It seems to me that you can only shame those who have shame; and judging from the behaviour my reader describes, some CSRs have no shame at all.However, some action is better than none, so by all means go ahead and tape the interactions. It could be useful to have hard proof, not just anecdotal evidence, of the contempt with which so many of us are treated in government offices.