Service industry and peculiarities in India
Around the world, the service industry is synonymous with the development in the post-industrialization phase. This is in the context of the three main sectors of a country’s economy; agriculture, manufacturing and service. It is estimated that for every technology job created in manufacturing, there are four new ones created in the service sector. It is easy to foresee the sheer abundance of new employment opportunities in India, considering the fact that we are still referred to as a primarily agrarian or agriculture economy. The number would have been a source of tremendous joy for all of us but there lies a "Catch 22" situation underneath. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t! These jobs are mixed blessings!
I was conducting a practical class for an undergraduate course in hospitality. The whole class was divided into two groups and one member from each group had to enact a role play. The situation narrated to them was something like this;
"You are a receptionist of a five star deluxe hotel. Its monsoon time and you are doing the night shift. Its 11 pm and it’s raining rather heavily outside. Your hotel is fully sold out and you still have a guaranteed reservation to honour. Horror of horrors, the customer does turn up, with his family in tow. There are two children, one of whom has a fever. You are the only one at the counter and for some reason; you do not have access to any of your superiors or managers for the time being. Your hotel has arranged for another room at a similar hotel nearby and your job is to convince the customer to shift to that hotel. You do not have much leverage to negotiate with the customer except may be a free cab and some complimentary snacks or non-alcoholic drinks. Maximum discount you are authorized to make is 10%. How would you handle this? The person who was to enact the role of the customer was briefed thus: "Make the life of the receptionist difficult. Be angry, aggressive and adamant. Do not be irrational or abusive but don't give an inch unless you are truly convinced.”
I would now like to list down some of my most striking observations during this role-play session for you to ponder over.
Every single person in the role of the irate customer acted so realistically well that it was difficult to differentiate between the real and imaginary situation.
Majority of people acting as receptionist were clueless, exasperated, irritated, angry and sometimes even speechless.
Female students fared better in handling the situation.
When roles were reversed i.e. the person acting as guest became the receptionist and vice-versa, the sense of "revenge" was palpable.
Whenever a student acting as receptionist got really stuck or got overwhelmed by the ferocity of the customer, they tried to escape by smiling sheepishly or laughing nervously and then casting a helpless glance towards the trainer, expecting to be rescued.
From this observation, I drew the following interferences:
1. Majority of people failed to handle irate customers.
2. Expressions of anger and intimidating behaviour came naturally to people and had assumed the form of a fine art.
3. When it came to handling crisis, people looked outward rather than inward for support. Majority of people did not have faith in their own abilities. Call it crisis of confidence.
4. Customers (mostly males) were less aggressive in front of female workers.
Now let me put all this in the appropriate context. Life in service industry is a story of traveling from one crisis to another, putting out fires incessantly. Firefighting is a dangerous occupation and so is the service industry. It’s exhausting, exacting and excruciating. You cannot even hide behind job descriptions because they themselves aren't very specific. I mean how precisely you can define the work of a “Relationship Manager” or a “Customer care Associate” and therein lay the "Catch 22" Situation. Growth in service industry, as an indicator of overall progress in a nation's economy does not come without a price or problem.
Let us try to understand the situation in it’s entirely. The primary (agriculture) and secondary (industry) sector are being increasingly mechanized and automated, thereby eliminating the need for manual employment. But is population size in actual terms increasing or decreasing? Obviously, increasing! So where would all these people find alternative employment after all? In service sector, naturally! Remember the 1:4 relationships between technology jobs and the ones in service sector.
It does not take much expertise to understand that the general stress levels all around are going up. The world is also changing at such rapid pace that it can culminate in "future shock" because of our malfunctioning coping mechanisms. Modern living has made time a very scarce commodity and all these factors have made us humans walking, talking pressure cookers, and waiting to explode on someone’s face! So who is that someone going to be? In psychology, there is this concept (displacement) that a child, who is really angry with his father for some reason but afraid to express it because of the father's overwhelming physical strength, goes and finds a softer target (such as a dog or a toy) and vents his/her anger at that. He is assured of the fact that the pet dog or the toy will not retaliate and hence it is quite a safe method of releasing pent up steam. Now, transfer this analogy to the adult world.
Aren't we all scared stiff of taking on strangers in a verbal or physical duel, half expecting them to turn out to be criminals or someone very influential? But don't so many strangers drive us crazy with their innumerable acts of bullying, rudeness, meanness or plain brutal assault. And don't we choose to keep mum about it because we do not wish to" aggravate" the "situation" any further. We routinely pocket insults, suffer jostling, wait in never ending queues and mutter curses at all this unfairness. We are afraid to raise our voices lest someone caught us by the scruff of our necks. The common man, as depicted in the daily cartoons of R.K.Laxman published in the Times of India, is a hopeless, miserable bundle of self-pity. So where does this common man go and what does he do to take out his frustration? He finds an employee working in the service industry and explodes on his or her face. Simple! But where would the employee in service industry go? The answer is, within. Without philosophizing unnecessarily, let me simply put it this way. Anger or sadness is a state of mind. And so is peace and happiness. It’s always a matter of choice.
If I have succeeded in putting it all across clearly then I am sure you would have arrived at the following conclusions.
· Majority of this country’s people working in service industry and 24x7 working days, are going to become inevitable with technological advancement and burgeoning population size. Indian call centers are already working mostly in night shifts and service industry employs close to 60% of the working population in prosperous nations like America or U.K.
· Employees in the service industry will be increasingly targeted for emotional vandalism and brutalization.
· There will be an urgent requirement to address the needs and grievances of emotionally brutalized employees in service sector.
· Organizations will be compelled to install mechanism to monitor and regulate the emotional health of employees.
We shall take about the measures and mechanisms necessary to be adopted, at the end of this chapter. For the time being, let us focus on the issue at an individual level. What alternatives do we have when faced with the verbal, mental and emotional onslaught of an unhappy and disgruntled customer? Holistically speaking, in every threatening situation, there are two options available; fight or flight! Running away may provide temporary relief but the problem doesn’t go away so how does one fight? It is ironical that what centuries of religious sermons and moralistic preaching could not achieve, civilization progress is going to deliver that, ever so slowly and yet so surely. Harmonious co-existence among people! Everyone will be a customer and server in some ways. Rejoice, for human race will be compelled to accept the laws of this universe, enumerated so beautifully in the best selling "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". Our survival instincts are going to force the governments and law-markers across the world to embrace globalization with localized flavour. This world will indeed become a tiny village and people will start governing and disciplining themselves. And all through democratic means and methods!
How? Right now, there is extreme emphasis on individuality and differentiation. Customer is the king and the server is asked to bow and scrape before him. All the training is aimed at making the server more tolerant, more accommodating. But as more and more people will find themselves in the frying pan called service industry, it will start a giant wave of change, the fourth wave of Alvin Toffler (ref. Third wave). It will be a wave of empathy and enlightenment because servers will also become customers elsewhere and they would do well to remember the old adage "Do unto others as you want others to do unto you.”And those who would be from agriculture or industrial sector will be subjected to laws governing behaviour in front of a server. Why? Because majority of voters will belong to the service industry and the law-makers would better heed their dictums on behaviour and decorum or else! As far as I can see, it’s going to be a bloodless coup, a victory without the loss of a single life. A lasting peace achieved through peaceful means! Utopia! Are you saying that?
However, it’s a scenario placed very far in a distant future. What do we do in the meantime, when the onus is still on us to bear with a customer, and smile at him? Before we proceed any further, let us take a quick test called, simply "The Happiness Test"!
Take the happiness test
On a scale of I to 7, indicate how much you agree or disagree with each statement.
1. Strongly disagree 2. Disagree 3. Slightly disagree 4. Neither agree nor disagree 5. Slightly agree 6. Agree 7. Strongly agree
1) In most ways my life is close to my ideal.
2) The conditions of my life are excellent.
3) I am satisfied with my life.
4) So far I have got the important things I want in life.
5) If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.
Add up your answers (rankings) and interpret your score.
Extremely dissatisfied with your life.5
Very dissatisfied.10
Slightly dissatisfied. 15
Neutral.20
Somewhat satisfied.25
Very satisfied.30
Extremely satisfied. 35
Most people score in the 21-25 range.
So what was your score?
Now imagine a day in your past life when you were really, truly unhappy. Try to recall how many people you succeeded in making happy and comfortable on that day, in that unhappy state of mind. None, I am sure. Because you wouldn't have cared either ways! Your own unhappiness was what concerned you.
Let us now pause for a moment and think of a bad day in the life of a service giver, say an air hostess, when she had to report on duty, no matter what. Don't you think that on her job, the smile would have been forced, gestures perfunctory and body language all wrong? And worse still, a passenger may have chosen to scream at her because she spilled juice on his clothes. Any person in his right frame of mind would call it unfair, right? Here is a piece I have borrowed from the Master's book, "Seven Habits..."
"One evening, a man was traveling in the New York local train. The entire coach was quiet and subdued except the four children of this man, who were shrieking, jumping and running all over the place. It irritated the fellow passenger no end for having this peace disturbed needlessly. What annoyed them even more than the behaviour of the young children was the behaviour of the father, who chose to silently stare in vacant space, oblivious to all the bedlam his children were creating and the effect it was having on other travelers.
Finally one passenger (Dr.Covey) decided to intervene. He walked up to the father and asked him, as politely as he could manage, to discipline the children as it was causing inconvenience to the rest of the passengers. The man said something to the effect, "I guess you are right, Sir! I must tell them how to behave. But we are coming back from the hospital where their mother just died. So they probably do not know how to respond to such a grievous loss and even I do not have any idea, about the right form of behaviour in such unforeseen, unfortunate circumstances".
How would you feel if you had a similar encounter in your life? Would you still be upset with the noisy children and angry with the uncaring father?
Perception:
The perception in humans can be defined as the mechanism or process by which thoughts are developed and formed. As thoughts have a definitive effect on our outward actions and behaviour, we must keep a vigilant eye on the very process when the thought is taking shape. Monitor your mind carefully to see whether the final thoughts will yield success, peace and happiness all around or will result in destruction, bitterness and sorrow for people around. When perception becomes clouded with conditioning(repeated exposure to a condition of living), it is called judgementalism ( judging people without taking time to understand them). We accept or reject people based on our pre-conceived notions and feel that we were right. We in the service industry would benefit immensely if we cultivated a quality in ourselves, called "empathy". It is the habit of always putting ourselves in the other person's shoes so that we can understand his or her point of view. And even in situations where the understanding may not be so obvious or easy, we must always extend a "benefit of doubt" to the other person because all of us are able to, almost all the time, rationalize and justify our own actions, words, stand or opinions
Paradox of service: In India, there is a cliche about guests which translates in to "Guest is God". There are attention catching sentences like the ones given below, aplenty
"The customer is the king and he deserves royal treatment"
"The guest is always right"
"A customer is the most important visitor…."
If we in the service industry actually mean it, then there shouldn't be any kind of hassles what so ever; whenever a transaction takes place between the customer and the server. And that is the paradox. Even though we are fully convinced that our entire existence, survival and success are dependent on a customer's approval, somehow we ourselves withhold our approval of our customers. We deliver service with a plastic smile, hating every moment of it because plastic smiles tend to make face muscle stiff and they ache. We speak in a polite tone even when we really want to hit him on his face. But most silly thing about this entire monkey business is our firm belief that the customer will not be able to see through our façade. The chapter on "Body Language" tells us that even when we want to repress a thought or an emotion, the body still sends out clues and signals that contradict the verbal part of our communication. And I strongly believe that every customer in this world in equipped with an in-built antennae to pick-up these non-verbal clues and signals emitted by a stressed-out service giver. Absolutely no point for guessing whether the customer would enjoy such a double-standard in service! So where is the solution?
Here, I would like to introduce a slight variation to the usual answers doing the rounds. My studies over the last 10 years have shown that there is a clear and certain link between the childhood and upbringing of an individual and the future success. The link is discussed at great length in another chapter titled "Winning a game called life". Here, I would like to present a brief summary of the whole idea.
for all children their parents serve as the role models insofar as social behaviour is concerned. A child learns the basics of life at home and if the basics are not in place, chasing success in whatsoever from would be a futile activity. Parents can never preach what they themselves do not practice. It is our mission to sensitize all the parents in India about the enormous responsibility they carry towards the success of their beloved child and I strongly recommend all the parents and teachers to read the chapter called "Winning a game called Life."
Let me outline the specific areas where parents need to set the right examples and provide a conducive environment for their children. I would like to include today’s teachers in this mission, too.
A. Inter-personal skills:
We humans are social beings and the social structure that civilization process has established over centuries has been sustained so far because of the understanding that a group is far more effective in ensuring survival and prosperity as compared to an individual’s efforts. The greatest achievement of the human race has been through team work. Therefore, individuals have to learn to adapt to the dynamics of group interactions and still contribute. How would a child learn the intricacies of acceptable group behaviour if the parents themselves are not able to get along with their neighbors, colleagues, family and friends? And the most important of all, husband and wife getting along with each other! It is no secret that children from happier families are better at negotiating the challenges that life throws at them whereas kids out of broken or malfunctioning homes suffer from inferiority complex and under-confidence. Life scares them and throws them off-balance.
B Emotional intelligence:
Experts on success and personality development tell us that more than the intelligence; it is a person's ability to manage and suitably express his or her emotions that sets winners and losers apart. And where does a child learn the "Emotions Management”? At home of course! If elders and parents in the family are in control of their negative emotions (viz. anger, fear and sorrow), the child learns by imitating the same model. On the contrary, if there are frequent outbursts of anger, overt display of fear and consistently exhibited bouts of mood swings, the child surmises that it is okay to behave like this. Such a person would always find it difficult to gain acceptance in a healthy and effective group because of one’s moody, erratic and irritating behaviour.
By now it is amply clear to us that not only do we need to care for food, clothes, education and physical health of the child, we as parents and teachers also need to look after their emotional well being.
Service industry in India:
In developed countries, more than 50% of the workforce finds employment in the service industry whereas in India, Agriculture is still the source of livelihood for the majority. The level of unemployment is so high that service industry in India is predominantly male. In contrast, the mature economies like UK employ as high as 75% female workers in their service industry. Right in the beginning of this chapter, we witnessed how ladies were more effective against an irate male customer and that is why Indian service industry has begun with a handicap. Even thought it would prefer female employees, their proportion in the labour supply in miniscule. Listed below are some of the prominent and peculiar features of Indian Service industry.
Because of the abundance of labour supply, the wages and salaries are deliberately kept abysmally low. This fact is responsible for failure to attract the better talents. This in turn creates quality problems. Even the quantitative productivity is significantly lower in comparison to mature economies.
Because of labour intensive nature of Indian service industry, Automation in still frowned upon and unions are likely to adopt a confrontationist and obstructionist stance if companies try to reduce work force.
Working women carry a social stigma and often, they are prevented from working after marriage by their husband or in-laws. The scarcity of female employees only gets compounded further.
Terrorism, hygiene, infrastructure and behaviour of locals with the tourists remain the biggest blocks in the progress of the Indian service industry.
Corruption in our country puts a question mark on the trustworthiness of the business and people here. People doubt everyone and everything. Since service is intangible, low levels of trust means low business volumes. Pricing is always questionable and dubious.
The training for students pursuing a career in service industry is still skill oriented rather than attitude oriented. As training itself is considered a "loop line", the remuneration levels also being low, the brightest and smartest shy away from making a career in training. The overall impact of this can easily be understood.
The unsocial working schedule, inhuman split shifts, unusually long working hours, insufficient compensation deter all but some from joining service industry, especially at entry level frontline jobs.
The rate of attrition or manpower's looses are significantly high due to the following there factors;
Poor training
High work stress
Low wages
The quality benchmarks are still quantitative in nature. The vagueness in job description makes training and learning equally difficult.
Indians tend to believe that servility is equal to humility. The servility is very much evident while dealing with fair-skinned foreigners. Call it the British complex. Assertive behaviour is perceived or interpreted as arrogant behaviour. Assertive means polite but strong!
Perhaps, the biggest irony of it all, is that in a country proclaiming "Atithi Devo bhavah" (Guest is God)" at every given opportunity, the guests at Indian homes are least welcome these days than they ever were. So, even though we many claim to be culturally inclined to being generous hosts, in reality we aren't.
To summarize it all, despite numerous advantages, the growth of service industry faces intimidating challenges and the most formidable of all is changing the attitude of this amazing country. And I am not being sarcastic in the least here.
Change leaders: Organizations strategically introduce change only after testing the waters, by disseminating and propagating the idea or plan through carefully selected change agents. I believe that if change agents are also made the stakeholders; they are motivated to actively work for successful introduction of any proposed change. The interested change agents then become change leaders because their success or failure in now directly related to change.
An attitudinal transformation of a country of more than one billion seems highly improbable if people can neither be entrusted to media houses with vested commercial interests nor governmental agencies that are either corrupt or indifferent. The change leaders are going to be the employees working in the service industry and the cheerleaders would be organizations that stand to profit from a boom in the industry. Once it is made clean to them, that their success is entwined with the happiness and satisfaction of their customers, they would be willing to go that extra mile. I am a firm believer in Douglas McGregor’s “Theory Y" on people.
Work is as natural as play!
Differentiation: In an age of rapidly changing tastes and preferences, service organizations and destination need to create ‘differential factors’ that will set them apart. It is also referred to as U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition) in product marketing.
Customization: Service industry is in greatest need to customize its products according to customer needs. It has to go beyond paying lip service to "personalized service" and instead, set in place a “need identification mechanism" that would pick up even unstated needs. Employees need to be better trained in areas such as communication, psychology, body language and sales & marketing.
Service industry also requires customized job descriptions, taking into account factors such as gender, religion, ethnicity and personality. It may sound discriminatory but my basis of saying so is only uniqueness of every individual and the principle of putting the right person in the right place at the right time. To ensure credibility selection criteria as well as procedure must be made transparent and allow every candidate the "right to information."
Job security in service industry: In manufacturing industry, the jobs of employee were protected by a combination of labour unions and labour friendly legislations. Since manufacturing was technology driven and machine intensive, the personal attitude of employee hardly affected the quality of the product so long as he chose to push the correct buttons. However in service industry, the employee is an inseparable part of the product. In fact, on occasions, the employee itself is the product. Can unions or laws defend a poor service or product in an era of consumer supremacy?
Service industry thrives on the relationships, that of the customer and the server. And relationship thrives on trust and a "WIN-WIN" approach to dealings. I win, you win. This not only calls for the server to empathize with the customer, it also calls for the customer to treat the server with dignity and respect. We in India have to go a long way before we can rise above the "Master-Servant" mentality. This mentality says," I've paid you for your services and now I own you. I can treat you like dirt. "It is this sick mentality that has wrecked the morale of many budding young professionals. And the responsibility for changing this lies solely on the employers who have to give up their "profit at all costs" approach because the sacrificial lamb is invariably the hapless, defenseless employee. The organization will have to chalk our policies that empower an employee to refuse to serve a customer who has forgotten his manners in his bathroom! That should take a lot of strain away from employees and managers because if customer has certain rights, so does the employee.
But we were discussing about job security in service industry! An employee’s biggest protection would be guest comments in the customer feedback card. Better the comments, greater the security. In this context I would like to include the idea of "Server-Leader" of Dr. Stephen Covey. He says that those who are aspiring to leadership roles or positions must be committed to serving their followers. Only by serving can one ensure loyalty of one's followers. Therefore, the prescription for job security in service industry is quite simple, "Have a large fan following among your customers by being a ‘Star’ server."
Not willing to serve, get out of there!
Need identification mechanism:
Instead of relying just on a "Guest Feedback Form", also send a copy of "Guest Expectations Card" to all prospective customers in advance. Ensure to receive it before the actual interaction.
Let "Guest History Cards" be installed on-line and allow the customer to update, edit, improve or alter his own history. A disinterested and indifferent data entry operator cannot be expected to generate authentic or accurate guest histories. A customer will be naturally keen to create a "beneficial" history card for himself."
At all customer-server contact points, install video recording cameras to capture facial expressions and bodily gestures, postures and movements. Let body language experts deduce about the quality of transaction as well as provide reliable feedback to the serve to handle the customer better.
Recording transactions would provide a basis for the "Right to refuse service". It can also reveal when the server has overstepped the line.
Make "Body Language", Non-verbal communication a mandatory subject of all Institutes imparting education on service.
Let psychology become a regular subject in the curriculum, with special emphasis on consumer psychology and behaviour.
Let there be dual grading system for performance appraisals; One internal and the other external. The internal grading system should be on a numerical rating scale, with objective and precise performance bench-marks. These bench-marks should be in the form of activity, time, money or physical output. The external grading system may still be guest satisfaction indexed. The Guest comments card should target areas that may lead to customer satisfaction or otherwise.
The guest feedback should be a part of the Guest History on-line. The consumer may choose to modify his grades or comments once he is away and emotionally less involved.
The expectation card should be sent to all service users, and not just the one paying the bill. The expectation card may be demographically marked to identify specific market segments and their preferences. That would make service marketing niche oriented and thus, more effective.
Considering the huge volumes of data this mechanism will generate, it will all have to be computerized and on-line. Let the consumer share some responsibility if he or she wants outstanding and tailor-made service products.
Future of service industry in India:
In the landmark book ‘Power Shift’, the author talks about a wonderful opportunity coming the way of still predominantly agrarian economies like India. In simple terms, it professes bypassing the industrialization phase of the growth trajectory (and saying bye-bye to ecology damages) and marrying happily of Agriculture and Service Sector. The intended outcome was to avoid the ills and side effects associated with industrialization, especially pollution and profit thirsty ruthlessness of corporate behemoths. The technological advancement was to be focused on improving productivity of the farmers and internet was to enable more and more people working from their homes. That would provide and almost idyllic lifestyle. An internet enabled techno-savvy house set against a rural back-drop.
When I read it, I was thrilled. It just seemed a perfect future, too good to be true. But it seems the second richest man in the world has different ideas, and it also seems that he may be right, after all. Buffet has consistently resisted investing in companies that are not the traditional brick-n-mortar ones. In other words, he still puts his money on companies producing tangible goods rather than intangible anything else. The logic is quite simple. Human race cannot do without physical products.
The tertiary sector i.e. the service industry cannot do without the first two. And therefore, India has miles to go before it really becomes a service super-power. Just doing low-margin back-office jobs does not mean that India has arrived. The real creamy jobs are still appropriated by the industry majors of this world.
Gaining the competitive advantage in service world:
Service industry employees will not only have to constantly work on upgrading their knowledge and skills, but also tend to their own emotional well being, motivation and spiritual upliftment. Ways and means to do so will depend on the individual personality and preferences.
Different strokes for different folks.
Customer orientation is all fine. The organization will have to introduce server orientation in their day-to-day operations.
A fraction of tediousness involved in service delivery should be transferred to the customer himself. If unwilling to do so, include a "Bridger" who would suffer the tedium but will be compensated for, all at the customer's expense. Attach a price to good service.
Introduce a concept like "six sigma" in service delivery process. Identify the point, process or person responsible for failures to deliver service. Set a maximum tolerance level. After that, eliminate the malfunctioning part.
Work on job descriptions. Make them "action-verb" oriented rather than vague or ambiguous sounding phraseology.
Customize job specifications. Consult lawyers to prepare ground against accusations of discrimination. Govt. should also take off the vote oriented blinkers and co-operate. We have already talked about "Right to Information" for candidates wishing to know the reasons for their disqualification.
All the three sectors of the economy are inter-related and inter-dependent. Inter-sector co-ordination and cross investment would work to the world's advantage.
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