Service secrets
I am frequently impressed with the Chinese who come to Trinidad and open their little restaurants or stores. They are so clearly hard-working and, even when they can hardly speak English, helpful and polite. When I lived in Champs Fleurs, I used to chat a little with Pearl at the Nice City restaurant in Petit Bourg, and I asked her once about this Chinese way. She said it was something children in China were always taught — be respectful, be polite, work hard. And I also used to notice the ways of some of the customers, who would come to buy the excellent food in their expensive sneakers and talk pidgin Chinese, quite unaware that they were mocking their betters. The economist Thomas Sowell, in his book Race and Culture, observes that "while a one-country analysis might make it seem plausible that Chinese retailers were once predominant in Jamaica for reasons peculiar to Jamaica, a world view shows that they were also predominant in the same occupation in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Panama City and Lima, Peru." Historian David Landes, author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, offers this explanation: "If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes all the difference." If this is so, Vision 2020 is a lot longer away than 15 years. Denis Solomon, one of the few Trinidadians I continually learn from, once provided me with examples of the Trini work ethic as compared with that of foreigners. In one case, a Japanese company involved in building the Mount Hope medical complex was allowed to import Japanese managerial staff, but not workers. Then the trade unions noticed Japanese men driving trucks, so they complained to the government. The Japanese responded that, since a Japanese driver would make three trips to a Trinidadian’s one, they had imported managers and put them to drive trucks. The second example involved the PoS port where, in the boom years of the ’70s, port workers, infamous for their sloth, used to earn more than professional persons. Korean fishing vessels were told they had to hire two gangs to load or unload a vessel. The Trinidadians worked so lackadaisically that the Koreans found it more economical to hire the two gangs but do the work themselves "while the stevedores watched but," Denis remarks, "did not, I suppose, learn." Now I think it is fair to say that our attitude towards efficiency has improved in the last 30 years. But I think it is also fair to say that it has not improved enough. Last week, I wasted two half-days coming into Port-of-Spain. My car was due for its 40,000 km service, and the auto shop insists that customers come at 8 am. Since I live in Central, this meant a two-hour drive in traffic. The first time, they told me my car couldn’t be serviced because some mechanics hadn’t come out. I made another appointment for two days later and, when I reached that morning, had to wait 30 minutes on the road just to drive in to the service area. When I finally got in, I was again told that they couldn’t service my car that day. I suggested to the clerk, a middle-aged man, that they could have called me beforehand. "If I did that for every customer, I’d be here till seven in the night," he said. So I asked, mildly, what they were going to offer me. He looked puzzled. "I expect a free service," I explained. He told me I could call the manager. I smiled. "I won’t call the manager," I said. "He can call me." The clerk duly made a note but, unsurprisingly, I never got any call. But I had already spoken to the salesman, who had sold me my car, and he made sure to get me in when I returned the following week. But they gave me back my car 45 minutes after the promised time, and I didn’t get any discount for the inconvenience. Now contrast all this with a policy at an American quarry company named Graniterock where, if a customer is dissatisfied with a product or service, they can simply circle it on the invoice, deduct the cost, and pay the balance. The company uses this as a method of finding out that customers are unhappy before they actually lose them. My next car, of course, is unlikely to be the same make of vehicle. In this place, business persons don’t generally consider customer service to be crucial to financial success. To be sure, they will tell employees to be courteous and so on (which is itself an improvement from the oil boom years) but customer service rarely extends to actual action. This is partly because the ‘national culture’ — if any such beast exists — is not one which embraces the traits required for economic success. Sowell writes, "The overseas Chinese and Jews of the diaspora are obviously of different races and have different religions, food and language. Yet they — as well as Lebanese, Armenians, and Gujaratis and Chettyars from India, among others — have been noted for such patterns as working long hours, thrift, peacefulness (sometimes equated with cowardice), commercial reliability, and ‘clannishness’. Much of this pattern simply goes with the economic role they play." This economic role is that of the middleman — the person who provides goods and credit to other groups. "The very nature of the occupation restricts the kind of personalities who can be middlemen. There is, for example, little room for a middleman who is rowdy, drunken, or who cannot be depended on to be open for business, or to pay his suppliers or employees." Or, put another way, he can’t be the kind of person with a Carnival mentality. But Lee Kuan Yew pointed this out to us over 40 years ago. Now Singapore, an island like ours, is the ninth-richest country in the world. Email: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh
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"Service secrets"