Philippine President Benigno Aquino III (more commonly referred to as P’Noy because of his nickname, Noynoy) and his tourism department should start talking to the contact center segment of the BPO industry in the country. Why? Thousands of people working in the industry segment can tell him all about customer experience, customer loyalty, customer value, customer interaction, and a host of many factors that will surely help fix the issues and problems of Philippine tourism. Why the contact center sector? It is the largest, most accessible group of professionals whose single priority in their working life is to serve the customers of its clients. The other work activities they do just follow through or support the main objective – always make the customer happy!

Think about it! The moment a tourist boards a plane bound for the Philippines, the customer experience begins and ends the moment he steps back into an airplane bound for his country of origin. Is the customer experience what we’d like it to be if we were in his or her shoes? Today, I will stand by my observation that the customer experience in Philippine tourism experience is at its low side, not necessarily worst.

Boss! D’ Plane! D’ Plane!

The tourism department and travel service companies take a detailed look into every moment of contact with the customer, from the check-in counter, waiting at the gate, method of boarding, walking through the walkway tube, entering the plane, finding his or her seat, storing the luggage, sitting down, getting comfortable, waiting for everyone to board, waiting more for the control tower to give the go signal to taxi into the runway, takeoff, in-flight services like meals, drinks, reading materials, internet access, landing, taxi to the arrival gate, getting the luggage, walking out of the plane, walking inside the tube, looking for immigration, lining up for immigration procedures, talking to the immigration officer, looking for the luggage carousel, getting the luggage, proceeding to customs, conversations with the customs officer, getting transportation, waiting for transportation, and eventually leaving the airport.

That’s just arrival. Did I miss anything?

Recently, the original international airport terminal, called NAIA 1 (Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Terminal 1), was tagged as the worst airport in the world by a poll made by The Guide to Sleeping in Airports, a successor to the Budget Traveller’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports that has been online since 1994. This travel site were created by Donna McSherry, a 30-something Canadian-born travel agent specializing in South America. Though it was not something that came out of a global news entity like CNN, still, this travel site gets millions of hits a month, if not per week, that the “no vote of confidence” stung the country as a whole. Even Filipino Efren Peñaflorida, the CNN Hero of 2009 who started the novel idea of the pushcart classrooms, was robbed in the airport premises of Terminal 2 while he and his colleague were waiting for a car to pick them up.

NAIA-1 terminal manager Dante Basanta was quoted by GMA News Online as saying, “It’s rather unfair, (dahil) because we are working so hard to improve the services and facilities at the premier airport.” He touted the improvements to include refurbished ceilings, upholstered seats, and a more spacious arrival area. He added, “We cannot compete with other airports kasi hindi naman masyadong modern ang airport natin. We can only do so much with the old facilities.” Well, there you go. The obvious reason why NAIA Terminal 1 will continue to be what it is today. Do you think selling the airport terminal is the answer to this problem? Isn’t that just a “Band Aid” solution?

Where do you think P’Noy should start re-engineering the tourism industry?

Despite the tourist arrival targets of the Department of Tourism, the sad reality is that even the local population couldn’t mistake tagging their airport as worse than what they’ve seen in other countries. We can continue the flow of customer experience with dozens more of the “Moments of Truth,” those customer contact points where the tourist experience spells a huge difference between being satisfied and not at all. Under the Tourism Act of 2009, the Department of Tourism manages 13 operating units and 8 attached agencies and corporations (see Organization of the Department).

Twenty-one direct-report groups and not one can fix the errors of the country’s customer-tourist experience?

Hire a Customer Champion, Not Another Politician

If the Department of Tourism were a large enterprise conglomerate and considered all its potential tourists in the world as its customer, everyone in the department will begin their customer care campaign by understanding and knowing the needs of the client first before any recruitment and hiring, infrastructure installation, hardware and software implementation, process flow execution, quality assurance and control monitoring, and a host of other functioning groups and activities that support their one, new mission: providing the best customer care to the client. Brick and mortar, and wonderfully-made products and services don’t matter without the customer loving everything about the experience.

The products and services of the department may be varied but it must operate like a customer contact division that provides both onsite and offsite services, from traditional over-the-counter transactions to telephone-based help desk support and online means including social media. Its stores are the airports, embassy offices, tourist kiosks, tourist service desk, and many more. It sells the ultimate travel experience like it owned Thomas Cook, the 100-year-old iconic travel agency group which began creating chartered excursions and unique vacation packages. A clear understanding what the customer wants is the key factor to succeeding and transforming the Philippines into a great tourist destination, and not because of only one famous beach, but for its entirety. The experience need not be flawless at the start but constant and consistent upgrades should be part of the job.

The department has to undergo a rash, brash and immediate reeducation of its priorities; it is not about the airport nor is it the slogans and nice videos espousing how beautiful the country is. It is and has always been focused on the customer. “The Customer is King!” “The Customer is Always Right!” “A Complaint is a Gift!” “Customer First!” This is how the tourism champions should think about their jobs. The rest – people, place and process, notwithstanding the product – will fall into place once everyone in the department understands their new mission in life. Think Steve Jobs, his tunnel vision and his consistency of doing things since his garage days. Think Jan Carlzon and his book Moments of Truth, his story when he was president of Scandinavian Airlines wherein he turned the lackluster, state-run airline into a profitable business that won the rave of customers, worldwide. A “Moment of truth” is the notion that a service company’s overall performance is the sum of countless interactions between customers and employees, the so-called moments of truth that either help to retain a customer or send him to the competition.

Stop Policing and Controlling!

The Philippines has always been a controlling type of culture, fixing things by instituting more policing and control rather than getting into the real problem and implementing solutions geared towards lesser problem escalation, more on-the-spot decision-making to help the customer, a knowledgebase of recurring inquiries and problems, customer surprise, and so on. For example, my corporate mentor and Canadian-born John Novosad used to wonder why there was always three people inside the cashier’s booth of a typical store, and finding out later on that one’s for cashiering (the obvious function of the cashier’s booth), another checks what the cashier punched into the cash register versus the actual products, and the last person does the work of the second person (again) before bagging the items and stapling the plastic bag ten times (just to make sure it’s difficult to shoplift). Policing and controlling has never been part of the customer experience – it’s an extreme activity more focused on catching thieves and crooks than it is to serve the customer. It never motivates the frontline customer representatives to do their darn best, knowing they’re being watched behind their backs. Too much cost is being implemented in these two disadvantageous facets of managing the customer experience which could have just been given back to the customer. The mindset of serving the tourist as a VIP customer in the Philippines has to be re-engineered.

Get the Contact Center Industry Involved!

There are a lot of competent men and women in the contact center industry, the fastest-rising industry in the Philippines today, that can help lead, manage and assist the department tasked to correctly sell the country as a premier tourist destination and (then) service these customers at every contact point and customer interaction – every moment of truth – in the entire customer experience. Even the entry-level customer service rep or agent in a typical contact center can tell you how to best serve the customer needs of the tourist visiting the Philippines for the first time. Why? Because they’ve been doing a similar job every day, talking to 50 or hundreds of customers each day, their blood flowing with “The Customer is King!” slogans, philosophies, principles, guidelines, processes and ethics. Many of them live and breath “Customer First!”

One battle-cry I’ve always harped on many of the things I’ve done in my professional life is “To make it very easy for the customer,” a statement that first began with my involvement in customer service led by another corporate mentor, Tonet Rivera, in a direct selling company. The first is “very easy to start” where the customer experience of enlisting tourists to visit the country begins; “very easy to stay” means every moment of truth once they set their foot on Philippine soil; “very easy to earn or gain” doesn’t mean earning money but gaining a wealth of knowledge and understanding about the Philippines, and wanting to come back for more of that experience.

Last Word

I am but a small voice in the concern for making the customer experience of the tourists we are luring to visit the Philippines. We all need to pitch our ideas to P’Noy, the CEO of Philippine government and the person who can start the customer experience revolution in Philippine tourism. Going to and collaborating with the contact center industry segment of the country as a single source of knowledge and professional competency is just one solution. There is a wealth of more ideas that can continue to pour into the national government so it can decide how to attack the problem. Whereas the country was once bestowed the label “Pearl of the Orient Seas,” the country can win back that pride if only it concentrated and focused on the customer’s experience, those moments of truth that make or break tourism, and ingesting “The Customer is King!” Cool Aid that’s consistent with how tourists have usually come to describe the Filipino: always smiling, passionate, resilient, lovers of food, life, romance and festivities, musically inclined, and religious, to name a few positive traits.

“The Tourist is King!” As simple as that.

Title Photo from the Department of Tourism

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