Now
that we have a new Minister for Skills Development, this may be a good time to
pause and consider the truth of our skills development efforts. In a country where only about 2 percent of
those entering the job market receive any formal training, and where the
existing annual capacity to train is just over 3 million persons per annum, the
government has a target of skilling 500 million young people by the year 2022. This is an ambitious goal by any yardstick, both
physically and financially, and one that we will need to meet in full measure if
we are really to take advantage of the so-called “demographic dividend”.
The
trouble though, is that this is not just a quantitative target; success here will
depend partly on the numbers, but also on the quality of the skills imparted.
Not getting that piece right could lead us to a demographic disaster
instead, with poorly trained or untrained and unemployable young people being
let loose on the streets to cause mayhem and chaos.
Some
months ago, I took a small vacation, spending a few days in my favourite city,
Goa. For a change this time, I booked
myself into a brand new hotel, one that had started operations only a couple of
months ago. Swankily built, the hotel
boasted all the mod cons – rain showers, fancy light fittings, a mini bar, 24x7
room service, blah, blah, blah. From an
infrastructural point of view, it is hard to think of anything that could have
been added; clearly a great deal of thought and money had been invested in
designing and setting up the property.
However,
when it came to the staff and their orientation towards guest comfort, a great
deal was left to be desired. As in so
many other service industries, the training of staff seemed to have stopped at
the point where they had learnt how to smile and wish you ‘good morning’ or
‘good night’. My request for a softer
pillow than the one in my room left them completely flummoxed; this wasn’t a
request in their script, and they didn’t know how to deal with it!
In
recent years, there’s been a lot of discussion about skills training for young
people, and the need to equip them with the ability to take on different types
of jobs in the service industry. Yet in
none of these discussions have I once heard anyone talk about the concept of
service, and how to help trainees understand it. This lack of understanding impacts the manner
in which customer-facing staff interact with the most important person for the
business, the customer. Since in most
cases, this interaction takes place at the lowest level, it becomes the level
at which an organisation’s public reputation is made or marred.
Take
for instance, the Indian Railways; notwithstanding the many seasoned and
experienced managers in the organisation, its image in the public mind is
determined almost solely by the rude (or corrupt) behaviour of the TTE on the
train or the ticketing staff at the windows.
Similarly, anyone who has ever had to deal with a call centre at the
other end of a phone for banking or mobile services will know exactly what I’m
talking about. Two minutes into the
conversation, you’re wondering why you called them in the first place; unless
you have a really simple request (that you could probably have executed
yourself if you’d really tried), you will leave the conversation deeply
frustrated and ready to kill.
Mind
you, these are not untrained people; they have been trained quite extensively
in what is considered appropriate, but
never with the explicit end objective of serving the customer. They are given a set routine – if A, then B;
if B then C, and so on. No allowances
for the fact that the customer may want Z instead, and no scope for deviating
from the script, even if they were inclined to be helpful.
Another
example – I recently changed phones, and needed a smaller SIM card. When I went to the service provider’s store,
I was asked to provide proof of identity, residence, PAN card, etc, even though
I’ve been their customer for more than ten years, and this data should be
available on record. After which, the
new SIM card took more than 6 hours to be activated, during which time I had no
service. Contrast this with the process
followed in US when I needed a phone during a short trip. Not only did the retailer not need any
paperwork, the phone was activated within a few minutes, well before I left the
counter.
Which
brings me back to where I began. The
trouble with our skilling programmes lies not in the training or lack of it; it
lies in the fact that they are not focused on simplicity and service with the goal
of satisfying the customer. Why was it
so easy to buy a working phone in the US as opposed to getting a replacement
SIM card in India? Largely because
businesses there emphasise customer satisfaction, and will do whatever is
needed to achieve it, unlike here, where we carry forward the old government
mindset of “be grateful I’m giving you anything at all”.
Just
as the newly launched Swachch Bharat Abhiyan
seeks to change the way we look at cleanliness, we need to start stressing a
sense of service in our education, skills and training programmes. Skilling is not just about imparting
technical abilities; it must also instil an awareness of customer requirements,
and the need to satisfy them. Not doing
so will carry a much higher cost than the additional investment required for
this purpose. As the new Minister draws
up plans to establish new training facilities and involve the private sector in
delivery, wouldn’t it be great if he paid a little attention to this aspect
too?
