The founder and lead consultant at the Institute of Customer Service Professionals (ICSP), Yvonne Ohui MacCarthy, has recommended that establishments and businesses see their workers as human capital and not human resource.

Ms MacCarthy said this in an exclusive interview with Class News' Prince Benjamin (PB) on the sidelines of the 5th press release of the Ghana Customer Service Index (GCSI), Thursday, January 26, 2023, at the British Council.

"One of the recommendations I made this year was for organisations to look at the inside out approach," she said. "That simply means that you're really taking care of the internal customer."

She explained by saying that an organisation's internal customers "are your employees."

The board chair of the West African Association of Customer Service Professionals (WAACSP) illustrated her point by citing the COVID-19 pandemic and how it impacted customer experience negatively.

"There were a lot of people [internal customers; workers] who suffered burnout," she recalled. "There were a lot of people who suffered emotionally and that actually went on to affect the experience that they gave the [external] customer."

"The idea is for organisations to start looking at the people they have employed as human capital," she said, arguing that: "Anything you see as capital, you want to nurture and develop but the minute you start seeing it as human resource, it [becomes] something that needs to be consumed or used."

"So develop and nurture, instead of use and consume," she emphasised. 

The GSCI, a yearly survey and analytic publication of customer service performance, launched in 2018, is the brainchild of Yvonne Ohui MacCarthy.

E-Commerce was revealed as the sector with the best customer service delivery (85.01%) for the year 2022. Ghana as a whole scored a C+ (69.37%) on the customer service front.

See the GSCI for the year 2021 by visiting ghanacsi.org.