secondly, we want to be served efficiently and courteously with minimum waiting time. have you heard the story of a patient named tom that was being examined by a doctor? every few minutes the doctor had to stop talking with tom to answer calls from other patients, listen to their symptoms and advise them what to do. this went on for a while. when the doctor next answered the phone, he heard, “ doctor, this is tom calling! ” thirdly, we all want to get what we paid for. standards are important. have you heard about the customer who fronted up to the hamburger counter and asked for a burger that had stale vegetables, raw eggs that were dripping off the sides and beef that was still red with blood? the attendant was totally aghast and proclaimed that they do not serve such a burger and will definitely not serve such a thing to the customer. the customer calmly replied “ well you did so yesterday! ” my experience is that good customer service is about attitude and the culture of the business. it boils down to a personal touch and going the extra mile. concluding remarks finally, i would again like to thank ms. roshika deo for inviting me here this morning. i would also like to thank the distinguished speakers who are contributing to the program – they are all professionals in their own fields and have a lot of experience and knowledge to share with you today. to you participants, i wish you well in your deliberations. official opening i now have much pleasure in declaring this business seminar – increasing productivity and improving customer service open. thank you.

. one of my roles is to inspire everyone in our organisations to walk the talk on corporate ethics and values. these values must filter down to all aspects of the organisations. and we must align our system to reward those that uphold these values. we have therefore integrated the organisational values with our formal recognition and reward system in the bank. alignment to these values now determines the rewards that one will be awarded at year end. i have spoken many times in the productivity awareness week organized by productivity authority of fiji ’ s ( tpaf ). in one of my speeches i emphasised that “ productivity is not an end in itself. it is simply a means to an end. and what is the end? that end must be prosperity at the individual and household levels ”. being productive means working smarter and nor necessarily harder. it means producing more from the same resources and even producing more from less. in fiji our resources are limited. the biggest resources that we have are land and our people. how productive are we using these resources? i am sure that you will agree with me that we could do a whole lot more in this area. no wonder our long term economic growth rate is a meager 2. 5 percent – not enough to absorb our school leavers! at the bank, we have tried to take a macroeconomic measure of productivity by taking the total output produced by each worker. this is a very aggregative and crude measurement. it shows that productivity has grown by an average of around 1 percent since 1996. this is very low. some asian countries are achieving over four percent growth. my crude estimate says that the multiplier effect of a rise in the growth rate of productivity on economic growth is at least 2. this means that if we raise productivity growth from 1 to say 2 percent every year, we can raise our average economic growth rate from 2. 5 to 4. 5 percent. and that makes a lot difference in jobs, in incomes and in poverty alleviation. customer service let me say a few words on the second part of your theme that of customer service. when we talk about customers, we are really talking about you and me. we may be entrepreneurs or workers but we are all customers. and here the best motto is to do to others what you want done to you. firstly, we all want to be understood. communication and feedback are therefore important. listening is the best way of communication and believe you me listening is not an easy thing to do.