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Escalating expectations
published: Thursday | September 20, 2007
Martin Henry
It is not true that the customer is always right. What is true is that the customer is never satisfied, at least not for very long. Businesses everywhere are wrestling with what's being called escalating expectations, or inflated expectations.
As one business paper discussing escalating expectations put it, "the Age of The Customer is upon us, and most consumers realise that they have the upper hand. This has several broad-reaching implications. The most noticeable is that the satisfaction levels of customers in general are declining. Service delivery quality in some businesses may have been consistent over the last several years, but consumer expectations have risen, and benchmarked satisfaction metrics have declined.
"In addition, many businesses have felt the need to over-promise - and have markedly under-delivered, thus further decreasing satisfaction levels. The predicament is how to deliver on escalating expectations when economic pressures are necessitating service staff downsizing.
"The dilemma is how to win at this game - how to give customers what they want and deliver on their high expectations without losing your credibility - or your shirt."
I am far more interested in this business of escalating expectations in the political realm. While Government, almost by definition, is a monopoly, political parties compete for state power in democracies with all the features of escalating expectations and escalating promises to match.
One of my mental exercises in that powerless situation when the monopoly electrical power provider was out of operation after the passage of Hurricane Dean was to speculate which party in the general election the hurricane would most favour. Never in the history of Jamaica have we been more prepared for a natural disaster. Perhaps never fewer deaths in a major hurricane.
Infrastructure stood up
A prime minister hunkered down with the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management throughout the passage of the hurricane. Infrastructure stood up better than ever before. And never was there faster recovery to a good measure of normality. But apparently 'Dean' ended up favouring Bruce. No wonder Mama Portia was so stunned, obviously feeling betrayed by her ungrateful 'children'.
Golding will face his own Waterloo or, under the circumstances, a better analogy might be his own Portland Cottage or Caribbean Terrace. As was pointed out a couple of centuries ago by a writer whose identity is now in dispute, escalating expectations will ultimately destroy democracy. For, "a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
But we are not there yet. Like Thomas Malthus' quite rational prediction of mass famine from continuing population growth, we are managing pretty nicely to defer inevitabilities.
Campaign promises
Mr. Golding and the Jamaica Labour Party have made two campaign promises which we can count on the oppose, oppose Opposition not to oppose. One promise is to root out corruption, which, if ever successfully done, will take with it massive chunks of Jamaican public life, some of it quite close to anyone who is prime minister.
The other promise is bound to foster more 'corruption'. It is the promise of providing MPs with extra-constitutional constituency development funds more substantial than the old SESP against which I have levelled the same almost lone-voice criticism.
Mr. Golding and the JLP are in power - and Mrs. Simpson Miller and the People's National Party are out - due to some hair's breadth vote counts. It is going to be the stupidest of MP who does not immediately grasp the 'buy vote' potential of the constituency development fund and use it as such.
Major centralised projects which stand to deliver indirect benefits slowly to a large number of constituents [but which caan buy vote] are going to have a very hard time competing with handout type crash programme projects where large numbers of the numerically powerful voting poor can hol' a personal change now [and deliver the votes].
In any case, direct control of expenditure by members of the Legislature of Government is a clear prostituting of their legitimate functions as lawmakers and of the Constitution. But, driven by handout precedent and escalating expectations [a pressure which made Danny Melville quit years ago], which MP can now be so-so lawmaker and constituency 'representative' in the House of Representatives?
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
published: Thursday | September 20, 2007
Martin Henry
It is not true that the customer is always right. What is true is that the customer is never satisfied, at least not for very long. Businesses everywhere are wrestling with what's being called escalating expectations, or inflated expectations.
As one business paper discussing escalating expectations put it, "the Age of The Customer is upon us, and most consumers realise that they have the upper hand. This has several broad-reaching implications. The most noticeable is that the satisfaction levels of customers in general are declining. Service delivery quality in some businesses may have been consistent over the last several years, but consumer expectations have risen, and benchmarked satisfaction metrics have declined.
"In addition, many businesses have felt the need to over-promise - and have markedly under-delivered, thus further decreasing satisfaction levels. The predicament is how to deliver on escalating expectations when economic pressures are necessitating service staff downsizing.
"The dilemma is how to win at this game - how to give customers what they want and deliver on their high expectations without losing your credibility - or your shirt."
I am far more interested in this business of escalating expectations in the political realm. While Government, almost by definition, is a monopoly, political parties compete for state power in democracies with all the features of escalating expectations and escalating promises to match.
One of my mental exercises in that powerless situation when the monopoly electrical power provider was out of operation after the passage of Hurricane Dean was to speculate which party in the general election the hurricane would most favour. Never in the history of Jamaica have we been more prepared for a natural disaster. Perhaps never fewer deaths in a major hurricane.
Infrastructure stood up
A prime minister hunkered down with the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management throughout the passage of the hurricane. Infrastructure stood up better than ever before. And never was there faster recovery to a good measure of normality. But apparently 'Dean' ended up favouring Bruce. No wonder Mama Portia was so stunned, obviously feeling betrayed by her ungrateful 'children'.
Golding will face his own Waterloo or, under the circumstances, a better analogy might be his own Portland Cottage or Caribbean Terrace. As was pointed out a couple of centuries ago by a writer whose identity is now in dispute, escalating expectations will ultimately destroy democracy. For, "a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
But we are not there yet. Like Thomas Malthus' quite rational prediction of mass famine from continuing population growth, we are managing pretty nicely to defer inevitabilities.
Campaign promises
Mr. Golding and the Jamaica Labour Party have made two campaign promises which we can count on the oppose, oppose Opposition not to oppose. One promise is to root out corruption, which, if ever successfully done, will take with it massive chunks of Jamaican public life, some of it quite close to anyone who is prime minister.
The other promise is bound to foster more 'corruption'. It is the promise of providing MPs with extra-constitutional constituency development funds more substantial than the old SESP against which I have levelled the same almost lone-voice criticism.
Mr. Golding and the JLP are in power - and Mrs. Simpson Miller and the People's National Party are out - due to some hair's breadth vote counts. It is going to be the stupidest of MP who does not immediately grasp the 'buy vote' potential of the constituency development fund and use it as such.
Major centralised projects which stand to deliver indirect benefits slowly to a large number of constituents [but which caan buy vote] are going to have a very hard time competing with handout type crash programme projects where large numbers of the numerically powerful voting poor can hol' a personal change now [and deliver the votes].
In any case, direct control of expenditure by members of the Legislature of Government is a clear prostituting of their legitimate functions as lawmakers and of the Constitution. But, driven by handout precedent and escalating expectations [a pressure which made Danny Melville quit years ago], which MP can now be so-so lawmaker and constituency 'representative' in the House of Representatives?
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.