Skill Bill

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?