“The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.” I think that with this quote from management guru Peter Drucker I can summarise the spirit of the importance of customer service.

Customer service is all about delighting customers, which is a must in a competitive environment. As the influence of globalisation comes to bear on us all, satisfying our customers is a strategic must. It is neither a retrofit nor an afterthought.

With our economy becoming more and more service-driven, the impact of having a first-class customer-service function is a necessity rather than anything else. A good customer service is the hallmark of any entity. A lasting impression is what counts and customer service is an investment in building goodwill.

Perhaps the epitome of our customer-service specialty can be attributed to our ancestors, who have uniquely carved an honourable mention in the Acts of the Apostles wherein it is written that they gave refuge to shipwrecked sailors without even knowing who they were. This is further attested by the fact that Malta has one of the highest tourist densities per capita in the world.

We must also keep in mind that the service industry has a wider dimension. Customer service is not just a question of dealing with the external customer. We are all clients of each other in the widest possible sense. Let us adopt the frame of mind coined by the famous American President, the late John F Kennedy and see how we as individuals, leaders, managers and team players can contribute to a better customer experience to our external and internal clients.

In our recent past, the Maltese economy has evolved into a robust service industry. By any yardstick, Malta is a service-based economy, and the fulcrum of any service is human interaction. These interactions, when involving business-to-public exchanges, translate into a customer-service function that delivers value to clients. Delivering a proper customer-service function is essential, and I believe that there are various ways and means of how to satisfy a client, some of which are commendable, others not so much, while others leave a wide scope for improvement.

The strategic imperative of a good customer-service experience is fundamental to any type of service provider. Products on their own add value to one’s expectations, but it is the overall customer experience which makes the difference between success and failure.

Politically, our pro-competition standing is the fulcrum of what we expect from the private sector. Introspectively, we as a government have a duty to also match the private sector in terms of “customer service”.

Sometimes the public service is blamed for a number of shortcomings. However, while certain practices are still ingrained in some quarters, as a government we are doing our utmost to ensure that the customer-service function in the public sector reaches the highest standards.

In certain departments, automation, online services, public/private operations and motivated people have done the trick. In other areas, more work has to be done and is being done to ensure that the best value-for-money, efficiency and effectiveness prevail. The strategic value of any entity’s customer-service function can be seen as how certain entities flourished while others hit hard times.

Working to a standard will surely enable you to harvest the benefits of standardisation and ensure that your level of service is measurable and therefore it is controllable. This is after all what modern management practice is all about. The importance of customer service as a soft investment by any entrepreneur or public entity is an important aspect in any investment decision as much as brick, mortar and technology. Our primary resource as a nation is manpower, which is a versatile resource, needs to be motivated, trained and retained over time.

In Malta, investment in education and ICT has been strong in the last 10 years, and the growth in the service sector, which is highly dependent on the customer-service function is evident everywhere. This is our new export market. Our services are now exportable everywhere given the wider remit of the virtual worlds. To take one example, the call-centre industry can attest to this. Our robust telecoms infrastructure attracted a number of call centres that are exporting our services all over the world. Today this is one of the key elements in our soft-export industry which is riding on the wave of outsourcing in continental Europe and also locally.

Having said this, I reiterate that in all aspects of business, customer service has become a main pillar for the success or demise of a business organisation.

Censu Galea is Competitiveness and Communications Minister