KINGSTON, Jamaica – More than 30 employees of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service are to be awarded on Friday, October 6, for demonstrating excellent customer service.

They will be recognised during the second staging of the ministry’s Service Excellence and Awards Luncheon, scheduled for The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston, beginning at 10:00 am.

The event coincides with activities marking Customer Service Week from October 2 to 6. It will serve to acknowledge staff completing the HEART/NSTA Trust’s Customer Service Training Programme.

Director of Customer Service at the ministry, Rory Stennett, indicated that the ceremony will be used to “recognise the internal division… that customers are telling us is delivering the best service and that our statistics are telling us is delivering the highest level of service”.

“It means it doesn’t take long to get service from them, things turn around very quickly, and [clients] have rated them highly for customer satisfaction,” he explained.

Stennett pointed out that the customer service course “isn’t a soft skills programme”.

“It’s an official certification and it’s not just for front-line staff; it’s for supervisory staff as well. It’s one thing to learn how to deal with the customer, but people also need to learn how to train and how to manage supervisory staff. This is the first cohort of our supervisory staff that have been fully trained and certified,” he said.

Stennett said the ministry will continue to recognise individuals when they have completed the customer service training as a part of building the culture of service excellence.

“We think if we reinforce these behaviours positively, they’ll propagate across the ministry. It’s a way of ensuring that we are continuing to reward the behaviours and cultures that we see emerging, so that they can continue to develop,” he added.

Stennett said the ministry believes that by upskilling staff with customer service training, they are honing the core of service delivery, which is the people.

“Our customer service strategy was built on a couple of tenets. Yes, we wanted to improve technology, reduce processing times and increase accountability. But we couldn’t leave [the] people behind,” he emphasised.

The director said the certificate awarded at the completion of the programme is one that “they can take anywhere”.

“We are dedicated to ensuring that our people continue to upgrade their skills, [and] continue to see the benefits [of] being here at the ministry and in the public service. We’re quite dedicated to the programme, and we’re going to continue it until we’ve fit everybody in a front-facing role, certified in customer service,” Stennett further stated.

– JIS