The new (draft) tourism Service Excellence Strategy. So what?

Cape Town – South Africa officially ranks dead last among nations in public sector customer service. And now Government is preaching service excellence to the tourism industry. Is this hypocrisy? Or real leadership?

When Accenture reviewed the public sector customer service levels among 22 nations in 2007, South Africa ranked last, scoring 6%, less than half the score of penultimate Poland at 14% and light years behind Singapore and Canada at 89 and 88% respectively. This reflects zero improvement since 2005, and all in spite of the Batho Pele programme having been in action for years now.

Now, in the waning months of 2008, we get first sight from DEAT of a draft “National Service Excellence Strategy for Tourism” (NSEST? Not such a nice acronym to pronounce. The “Tourism S-Ex Strategy” doesn’t really work either. But I digress.)

Lousy government customer service is, sadly, a longstanding national hallmark (surviving a queue in Home Affairs is a badge of honour of a magnitude that brings to mind that speech about St Crispin’s day before the Battle of Agincourt in Shakespeare’s Henry V. But again I digress.) So why all the hand-wringing and urgency now?

Three little words: Twen. Tee. Ten.

If you parse the Minister’s speech, it’s all about achieving the Departmental vision. But if you read the press release, you find the buried lede: it’s all about football. Given that 2010 is substantially a multi-billion rand investment in global publicity for the Rainbow Nation, the last thing government wants is to piss off a few visiting soccer hooligans fans in front of the world’s media and the billions on billions of viewers that are watching.

Now, in fairness, improved “service excellence” is very important for the travel and tourism industry, and if 2010 is the catalyst for making something positive happen now, well, we’re doing it for public transportation so why not tourism customer service too? Kudos to the Department for recognising the problem and putting a stake in the ground to try to do something about it.

However, I’m highly sceptical that government can be the one to provide leadership here. The carrots and sticks just aren’t sufficient, and the soft power that flows from leading by example is, well, non-existent. Neither Batho Pele nor the Moral Regeneration Movement give me much confidence that government is capable of leading behavioural change in South Africa.

I also think it’s a spurious correlation to link government customer service to private sector customer service. Yes, visitors would benefit from more service-oriented customs, immigration, police, traffic, parks and other officials, but will achieving that goal make restaurant service faster, taxi drivers friendlier, or travel agencies answer the phones after 16h00 or on weekends? I have serious doubts.

However, we are talking about a draft strategy here, and we have been afforded the opportunity to evaluate it, comment, criticise and make constructive inputs. In coming weeks I’m going to take a closer look at aspects of the strategy and invite comments, debate and criticism. Let’s have a go at it – or just have a go at me. But if you don’t comment, you can’t complain.

Technical note: If you’re looking in rapt anticipation for a copy to review for yourself, we haven’t actually gotten sight of the draft strategy. Yes, although it was announced Monday, it isn’t provided on the DEAT or Tourism Business Council websites (though the press release and speech announcing it were). I did, however, manage to find a PowerPoint presentation on it on the DEAT website, so that will have to suffice in the interim.

About Blogger
KURT ACKERMANN writes, researches and consults on strategy, business models and brands for organisations adapting to globalisation and technological change. He is the proprietor of the Afrikatourism blog for responsible travel at afrikatourism.blogspot.com.

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