BETTER NEEDS TO BE DONE!
June 26, 2014,By KNews, Filed Under Features/Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
I have read the official response by the Guyana Power and Light Inc (GPL) to complaints about the long waiting time experienced by consumers transacting business at its Main Street, location. I do not think that the GPL gets the point that is being made by those complaints.
The GPL is contending that it has in place a ticketing system that ensures that persons are attended to in a non-discriminatory way. In effect when you go into the GPL’s Main Street Office you have to a take a number and when your number is called you will be attended to. The numbers run consecutively and therefore you will be attended before the person that comes after you. Fair enough!
But that is not the point being made. The point is the long time it takes for your number to be called. The Peeper knows what he is talking about. It can at times take hours for your number to be called. You can also spend as long as forty-five minutes in the line to pay your bill.
The problem is a simple one. There are not enough persons to attend to the large numbers of persons to descend down on GPL on a daily basis. As many as two hundred persons can at times be in the Head Office of GPL. This is especially so when there is a disconnection campaign on.
The bulk of the persons who go to GPL head office do so for two reasons. The first is to pay their bills and the second is to query their bills and to question why they were disconnected. The lines to pay your bills are always long and slow. The queue to query bills and arrange for reconnection can take a long time also.
And the reason for this is that while there are a number of teller windows, not all are in use at the same time. The GPL has to address this problem by ensuring that at any one time all of the tellers are in place. You cannot run an efficient service to thousands of consumers unless all the tellers are in place.
People have a psychological aversion to waiting in lines. Burnham and Hoyte used to have people standing in line for hours on end for food. People do not like lines in Guyana. They bring back painful memories.
The problem today with many public institutions in Guyana is that they do not see persons having to line up as a problem. In fact, there are some places where it gives some bureaucrats a sense of importance when they have persons waiting on them.
There is also the related issue, also from the past, that many Government businesses tend to feel that it is the consumer who has to wait on them, rather than the other way around. As such, there is a terrible neglect of good customer service in government offices.
I have seen, for example, in the past how immigration officials at the passport office talked down to persons applying for passports. I have seen silly regulations in that very office prohibiting the use of cell phones in the waiting area where hundreds of people gather each day. What sort of regulation is that? What security arrangement is being breached if someone makes a phone call while waiting to submit their passport application?
At one stage an officer threatened an applicant who was waiting for hours that she would lose her turn simply because he felt she had answered her phone. That was some time ago, and I would hope that by now the concentration camp approach would have been abolished and more emphasis would be placed on serving the public in a timely manner.
But back to GPL! The utility company should see everyone that comes into its Main Street office as its customers and regardless of whether that customer has defaulted the GPL should be bending over backwards to ensure that they are attended to promptly. People should not have to stand in a long snaking line to pay their electricity bills. That should never happen.
It does not require rocket science to solve this problem. It just requires a different approach to customer relations.
The waiting time at the GPL Main Street office can be improved. But it also requires that there be different sections dealing with different complaints. And there should be trained persons directing customers to the section where they need to go. Each section should have its own numbering systems so that customers are attended to on first come, first serve basis. Customer service at its Head Office is one area where GPL has fallen down tremendously.
But credit must be given where credit is due. There has been tremendous progress under the present Chief Executive Officer. GPL is the only utility in Guyana where you can go on line and check the balance of your account. You cannot do that at the moment to check your landline telephone account or your water bill. You can only do it for GPL.
Emergencies are also handled promptly. If you have a problem with your electricity supply and you file your report, you can bet that within a few hours, a GPL crew will be looking into the problem. So there are many things that are working commendably for the GPL.
However, when it comes to the Main Street Office, better needs to be done!