Trinidad and To­ba­go can­not af­ford an­oth­er decade of medi­oc­rity in cus­tomer ser­vice. Like every cit­i­zen of this coun­try, I have ex­pe­ri­enced both de­plorable ser­vice and mo­ments of stel­lar cus­tomer care. My ex­pe­ri­ences dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son re­flect­ed this stark con­trast.

In one in­stance, to my sheer de­light, a bak­ery at­ten­dant walked over to a neigh­bour­ing busi­ness sim­ply to get me a spoon. In an­oth­er sit­u­a­tion, a cashier at a re­tail out­let ac­com­pa­nied me to the ware­house area to check on the avail­abil­i­ty of a piece of fur­ni­ture I need­ed. She did not aban­don her sta­tion; it was a qui­et mo­ment and she was ea­ger to serve. That ea­ger­ness ex­tend­ed be­yond the mo­ment it­self, leav­ing me with a last­ing im­pres­sion about go­ing be­yond the ex­tra mile.

On the oth­er end of the scale, I en­coun­tered glum fa­cial ex­pres­sions, a lack of will­ing­ness to serve and dis­re­spect­ful lan­guage. In one sce­nario, a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer opened a door, looked at me and said, “Pass.” Of course, I did not al­low that lev­el of dis­re­spect to go un­ad­dressed.

T&T’s en­tre­pre­neur­ial, man­u­fac­tur­ing, cre­ative ser­vices and ex­port sec­tors are lead­ing the charge in deep­en­ing our pen­e­tra­tion in­to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets. This trade move­ment is like­ly to evolve in­to a key lever in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, when­ev­er that shift be­gins to take flight. It is im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that com­pet­i­tive pre­pared­ness and com­mer­cial suc­cess are teth­ered not on­ly to prod­uct qual­i­ty and pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cien­cy, but al­so to sus­tain­able ser­vice ex­cel­lence.

Now is the time to re­think and re­set our out­dat­ed and ap­a­thet­ic ap­proach to adding val­ue to the cus­tomer’s ex­pe­ri­ence. We must em­brace ser­vice ex­cel­lence as a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor to rev­enue gen­er­a­tion. As we re­shape our in­ter­nal and ex­ter­nal eco­nom­ic fu­ture, the re­fram­ing of our na­tion­al cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence should be a pri­or­i­ty on the agen­das of both gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor lead­ers.

For busi­ness­es weary of fluc­tu­at­ing cus­tomer sen­ti­ment scores, the path for­ward re­quires lead­ers to em­bed cour­tesy as a cul­tur­al im­per­a­tive, en­force stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty, de­sign seam­less cus­tomer jour­neys, em­brace dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion and com­mit to sus­tain­able ser­vice ex­cel­lence. These are not fan­ci­ful as­pi­ra­tions. They are strate­gic im­per­a­tives that will de­ter­mine whether out­comes are de­plorable or de­light­ful.

As we be­gin 2026, I have three wish­es for shift­ing the nee­dle to­ward ser­vice ex­cel­lence in T&T.

The first is for busi­ness­es to aban­don out­dat­ed prac­tices that fail to de­liv­er mean­ing­ful cus­tomer out­comes. How long will the prac­tice of send­ing the same front­line em­ploy­ees to cus­tomer ser­vice train­ing, year af­ter year, con­tin­ue, with­out any im­prove­ment in their cus­tomer in­ter­ac­tion lev­els? It is time to find per­ma­nent so­lu­tions that ad­dress the root caus­es rather than ap­ply­ing Band-Aids to symp­toms.

Poor ser­vice de­liv­ery of­ten stems from di­rect and in­di­rect caus­es. Di­rect caus­es in­clude the ab­sence of de­fined stan­dards of care and weak en­force­ment of ex­ist­ing cus­tomer en­gage­ment pro­to­cols. An in­di­rect cause would be man­agers and su­per­vi­sors who lack ei­ther the skill or the will to coach em­ploy­ees to­ward im­proved per­for­mance. An­oth­er in­di­rect cause would be the ex­is­tence of cul­tures where care­less­ness, ap­a­thy and tol­er­ance for poor per­for­mance, with­out ap­plied con­se­quences, are com­mon­place.

My sec­ond wish is for busi­ness­es to cul­ti­vate cul­tures of vi­tal­i­ty. The in­ner en­er­gy of a busi­ness de­ter­mines whether it pro­duces calami­ty or har­mo­ny. Calami­ty man­i­fests in sus­tained con­flict be­tween in­di­vid­u­als, teams and de­part­ments. Har­mo­ny sows the seeds of care, en­abling em­ploy­ees to treat each oth­er, as well as ex­ter­nal cus­tomers, with kind­ness, cour­tesy and em­pa­thy. Pos­i­tive in­ner en­er­gy with­in a busi­ness is the strongest foun­da­tion for healthy cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ences.

My third wish is for busi­ness­es to recog­nise that they should op­er­ate as in­ter­de­pen­dent ecosys­tems, not func­tion­al­ly iso­lat­ed si­los. This recog­ni­tion stands to cre­ate the plat­form where ser­vice de­liv­ery jour­neys across de­part­ments and dig­i­tal chan­nels be­come seam­less and hic­cup-free. It will elim­i­nate the “time tax” cus­tomers pay for in­ef­fi­cient in­ter­nal op­er­a­tions. Here, the case for in­te­grat­ing dig­i­tal tools and au­to­mat­ed process­es that ac­cel­er­ate ef­fi­cien­cy is un­de­ni­able.

Fi­nal­ly, sus­tain­able ser­vice ex­cel­lence must be el­e­vat­ed to the lev­el of busi­ness strat­e­gy. The goal should not sim­ply be to re­duce com­plaints, but to add val­ue dai­ly to each cus­tomer’s ex­pe­ri­ence. Out­rage at ser­vice fail­ures must give way to sys­tems that cap­ture and act on cus­tomer feed­back, where the “voice of the cus­tomer” is treat­ed like gold.

Poor ser­vice com­pounds silent­ly, em­bed­ding its roots deep with­in the ecosys­tem of a busi­ness. The route to avoid­ing this out­come is sim­ply for a busi­ness to chal­lenge its com­pla­cen­cy and to say good­bye to out­dat­ed sys­tems. Do­ing so wel­comes con­tin­u­ous ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion and side­steps in­evitable de­cline.