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Police Customer Service Training Programme Underway

Contact: John Emmanuel

Officers on training

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - A series of customer training programmes targeting a wide cross-section of police officers got underway Wednesday, September 10, 2003 at the Police Training School at La Toc. Customer service is seen as increasingly important in light of the changing face of policing, as the force tries to engage the community in partnerships in the prevention of crime.
 

Security Expert Roger Eudoxie Media Consultant Denys Springer

School Commandant Errol Alexander told the over thirty participants, that the rational behind the three-day programme was to assist officers in changing their approaches in delivering customer satisfaction. “Too many times you hear members of the public complaining about the quality of the service that we are supposed to deliver,” said Alexander. “We now have to refocus our attention and get closer to them while trying as much as possible to give them satisfaction. One thing about it is that the police organization is one where the end product is to provide a service and our end product is not that of profitability. So we are judged by the people that we serve according to the level of customer service we offer.”

The programme has been co-ordinated by the National Research and Development Foundation (NRDF). Executive Director Gerald Morris expressed the view that the training programme will hopefully enlighten officers on their role as service providers, which in the end will help in dispelling many of the misconceptions surrounding police operations.

“Here we are giving you a chance to learn the techniques of how to present yourselves and how you sell your services to the people. We are hearing it all the time on the media that the police force and its people are indifferent. They complain they have not gas and all kinds of things. Some of these things we know are not true, some of them are isolated cases however the media being what they are sometimes they get mileage from it and it’s magnified, that compromises the quality of service,” explained Morris.

Facilitators of the programme are media consultant Dennis Springer and security expert Roger Eudoxie. Said Eudoxie, “as an officer when you enter a supermarket you expect quality service. It’s the same thing when members of the public call upon you, they expect nothing less than quality service and you need to deliver on that.”

Participants at the end of the workshop will hopefully go way with a clearer understanding of the impacts of customer service to the force, the country and its people. Some of the areas include : what is excellence service, your attitude and you, communication skills and handling customer complaints.

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