The government is in the process of undertaking reforms in public service that entail the transformation of service delivery to meet the expectations and aspirations of the public.
Kenya School of Government Director General Prof. Nura Mohamed said this transformation would be achieved through training and nurturing of public servants to cultivate a positive attitude towards service delivery and instill positive values in them, which can result in behavioural change and a positive mindset towards serving the people.
The Director General expressed the remarks in his keynote address to the Institute of Customer Experience (ICX) Kenya prestigious Service Excellence Awards ceremony, held at a Nairobi Hotel, where several private sector and public sector organisations were recognised for excellent customer services.
He explained that to make this a reality, the Government recently launched the Centre of Customer Excellence and Experience, where public servants, including those from the National Police Service and other bodies, would be nurtured to become customer-centric, efficient, and effective in-service delivery.
He revealed that as part of the agenda to revolutionise the public sector, the Kenya School of Government partnered with the Huduma Centre through a memorandum of understanding to have the entire public service trained on culture change to enable its officers to have a positive change in attitude and behaviour towards service delivery.
“Two years from today, you can visit any police station and get the quality of the service you can get from a bank or any other private sector institutions. Two years from today, I dare you to visit any police station and then compare the services today and the services then because the pace of the customer experience will change,” the director added.
Prof. Mohamed added it was further expected that through these transformation efforts, clients visiting public offices to seek services would be attended to and served in a diligent and efficient manner, while being considered as important customers, instead of being frustrated by being tossed back and forth as it had been witnessed in some cases in the past.
He noted that Kenya has great potential to achieve the highest level of social and economic prosperity as long as the country’s economic blueprints are implemented.
He expressed the need for the country to reflect on what went wrong in the past and how the Nation could learn from what happened in 1974 when Singapore had to come to Kenya and borrow the country’s policies.
“In 1974, a delegation from Singapore came to the then Kenya Institute of Administration to learn how to develop policies and how to come up with programmes of transformation. After one month, having looked at our policies, going through various reforms and the programmes we had shared on our own experiences, they went back and implemented, which brought about the Singapore of today,” Prof. Mohamed said.
He added: “What Singapore did in 1974 was, after benchmarking with us, they went back and implemented Kenya’s Sessional Paper No. 1. They just implemented it. The difference is they implemented it as we filed it away.”
Prof. Mohamed said that the time has now come for the implementation of Kenya’s excellent policy papers, as he urged all the stakeholders in the Public and Private Sectors to adopt a culture change whereby service delivery is focused on service excellence and the needs of the customer become the focus of their attention.
He urged those who run the affairs of both public and private sector organisations to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy that hampers the implementation of good policies that contribute to social and economic transformation.
“It is time for all of us to come to the realisation that we cannot keep going round as we must make progress in the fulfilment of our vision,” he further said.
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) won the award for the Best CX Social Impact and Sustainability. Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) was the 2nd Runner-Up in the Best Customer Communication Strategy category, while Wanjiru Njoroge, Senior Manager Customer Excellence, KCB Group, won the CX Warrior of the Year award.
Other winners in various categories during the event included I&M Bank, Diamond Trust Bank, Zamara, Jubilee Insurance, Britam Insurance, and The Nairobi Hospital, who were lauded for their strategic approaches and innovative solutions in customer experience.
The Service Excellence Awards serve as a vital platform for recognising outstanding achievements within the customer service fraternity. They underscore the importance of customer experience as a strategic priority, motivating organisations across the public and private sectors to continuously elevate their standards.
The event celebrated the exceptional achievements of organisations and individuals who have raised the bar in customer experience across Kenya’s public and private sectors.
By Joseph Ng’ang’a
