By Robert DZATO
The story is told of a Ghana Man (GM) who went to Japan. At the end of his visit, he decided to get a souvenir from Japan for his wife. He entered a Japanese shop to get something nice. At the entrance of the shop was a young Japanese Girl (JG), who was smiling. He felt welcome and entered the shop.
After about 10 minutes of being in the shop, he glanced at the entrance of the shop and there stood the Japanese Girl still smiling. The Ghana Man was intrigued, and he approached Japanese Girl to understand why she was smiling. A conversation ensued.
GM: I saw you smiling when I entered this shop, and you are still smiling. What is your job?
JG: I smile.
GM: You job is to smile? How long have you been doing this for?
JG: Yes. My job is smiling. And, I have been doing it for 10 years.
GM: 10 years! Smiling? Tell me why.
JG: I am building my nation.
At this point, the Ghana Man was even more interested and wanted to understand how a nation could be built through a smile. Most importantly, what the Japanese Girl meant by “I am building my nation”.
GM: I want to know how you are building your nation through a smile. Tell me.
JG: You know, when you came through the entrance of the shop, you saw me smiling. How did that make you feel?
GM: Oh, I felt welcome.
JG: Exactly! When I smile at our customers, they feel welcome to our shop. When they’re relaxed in the shop, they shop more. The more customers shop, the more, as a shop, we sell more to meet our sales target. When we exceed our budget, bonus is declared at the end of the year and I get some too. I do have siblings at home that I support. I also contribute to other worthwhile causes from the income I earned here.
Don’t forget though that as we as a shop sell more, the factories must produce more too. If the factories are to produce more, they must employ more people to work. These are the people who would otherwise have been unemployed.
Unemployment, as you know, can lead to crime and other social vices. The devil finds work for the idle hand, they say. You may not know it. Japan’s unemployment rate dropped to 2.5percent in August 2024 from July’s 11-month peak of 2.7percent.
Japan crime rate & statistics for 2022 was 0.00, a 100percent decline from 2021. Given the statistics, Japan is a safe and peaceful place for tourists like you to visit.
Indeed, as more people get employed because the factories must produce more, it just means more people pay taxes in Japan. It is the tax revenue that the Government of Japan uses wisely, at near zero corruption, to provide social amenities and public infrastructure that make Japan so developed. You may not know it but Japan ranked 16th on Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (2023). What is the situation in Ghana?
GM: Hmm, I don’t quite know.
JG: Well, in Japan, we are very interested in what happens to our tax money, so we know what our government uses it for. For meaningful development, of course. We are not spectators, we are citizens. We pay our fair share of taxes as citizens, and we hold our government accountable. Therefore, we are motivated to pay taxes.
GM: I see
JG: By the way, because Japan is developed and safe, tourist like you like to visit our country. And, when you do, you bring in foreign currency, which helps our currency (Japanese Yen) to stabilise. For example, from January -July 2024 alone, over 21million overseas residents visited our country, Japan (according to Japan National Tourism Organisation).
Well, that is how I am building my nation, by doing my job, which is simply, smiling.
GM: Thank you for sharing this wisdom with me. I have learnt a lot since I came to Japan a few days ago. Your story is the icing on the cake. I am going back to my country, Ghana, to share what I have learned with fellow Ghanaians.
Conclusion
As we celebrate customer service (rather customer experience) month of October, which is also the month of breast cancer awareness, let’s build our nation together. The moral of this story should inspire us all -Ghanaians- to build our nation wherever and whatever we find ourselves doing.
Afterall, the good old Bible says in Ecclesiastes 9:10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
Service excellence and customer experience-centricity must drive all we do. Excellence is a habit, not an accident (Aristotle). “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well” (Martin Luther King ).
Chartered Institute of Bankers, Ghana wishes you all a happy experience month. For banks and other financial services organisation that wish to excel in CX, the fundamental and strategic question to ask in pursuit a CX strategy is: are you pursing a customer strategy in a digital age or a digital strategy in a customer age?
>>>the writer is Chief Executive Officer, Chartered Institute of Bankers, Ghana
