The New Service Standards

Thanks God!.... 

Shukar Hay!!

Service Excellence redefined!!  

On theory, in the booklets or in advertisements Customer Service remains the focal point of all businesses specially service industry. Managers, coaches, trainers and consultants share various remarkable experiences of customer services where individuals representing different companies sets exemplary standards of customer services. The phrases "Thinking out of the box", "Going the Extra Mile", "Customer is the king", "everything for the customer" are used, practiced and encouraged almost everywhere. 

When it comes to service industry of Pakistan, There are certain similarities among all those service providers which are somewhat enjoying monopoly in their areas of operations. They have created another class of service excellence. In this class customer experience is different than all bookish and theoretical experiences. I termed it as "Thanks God!" or in Urdu  "Shukar Hay!".

They have done some unmatched work in their service areas to achieve this. Let me quote some customer experiences that will elaborate the spirit of the title of this write up:

"Thanks God! Today it was only 5 hour Load shading, thanks WAPDA"

"Shukar hay!  My flight is only 1 hour late, thanks to the lady at counter of PIA"

"Thanks God!!! Got the CNG right before it went offline"

"Shukar hay!!! I was not travelling on rail"

It needs some serious courage to get these satisfying statements from highly satisfied customers in any service industry of the world. The tragedy is that less suffering has become another definition of good service to the mass user base of all these services. This is why Monopoly is discouraged all over the world in any industry. PIA has competitors in most of the destinations now but still enjoys monopoly in various domestic destinations and unless the market is opened to other investors. International and local investors should be encouraged to invest and state intervention is eliminated from corporate structure. Otherwise it will remain same and we will keep on thanking for providing less bad services.