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| Prime Minister Freundel Stuart (centre) in conversation with Chief Executive Officer of NISE, Kim Tudor and NISE Chairman, Sir Keith Hunte. (A. Miller/BGIS)?? |
Barbadians are being urged to take responsibility for how they treat each other and by extension visitors to the island; and stop trying to affix blame on someone for bad service.
Prime Minister Freundel Stuart gave this advice today while addressing the Fifth Annual General Meeting of the National Imitative for Service Excellence (NISE).?? It was held in the Solutions Centre, University of the West Indies’ Cave Hill Campus.
He said: "Frankly speaking, I am tired of people blaming workers for bad service, workers blaming schools, schools blaming families, and families blaming society.?? We are all responsible for how Barbadians treat each other and the visitors on whom we depend for our economic well-being.?? It is also customary to blame the gatekeepers at the workplace."
Notwithstanding the fact that the first and lasting impression about a service provider is formed by the first person that one encountered, Mr. Stuart maintained that the bevaviour of all frontline workers was dependent on the kind of training received and the monitoring?? of it by management.
He also admonished management for providing training programmes at the inception of their businesses only to allow them to go on auto-pilot months after.
In view of this, Mr. Stuart praised NISE for allocating resources to not only train managers and supervisors, but for "exposing them to good practices at home and abroad".
Akin to the ongoing training for managerial staff, the Prime Minister also praised NISE for conceptualising the NICE Customer Service Index – a tool designed to measure customer satisfaction against the service offered.
"…I have been informed that instead of this assessment being perceived as "naming and shaming," it has received positive response from organisations, many of which want to learn from each other as it relates to improving their service delivery," he added.