METRICS

By Raoul Suarez

She has worked in a call center for almost a decade now. The nights felt like days. The days often disappeared in her sleep. It’s a routine life. Headset on.  Greetings at the ready. A smile that’s invisible but required.

The rhythm of her shift was predictable. Calls in. Calls out. Surveys. Targets. Metrics. Everything was measured. Everything was recorded. There’s a number for everything. Attendance, AHT (average handling time), FCR (first call resolution), QA (quality assurance) scores, and CSAT (customer satisfaction) were all a part of the daily grind. All these and more were a part of the balanced scorecard.

It’s a world where accountability was not optional. If a customer said they didn’t feel heard, it mattered. If the same issue came up repeatedly, it’s investigated. Processes are updated. Coaching sessions were scheduled. Mistakes were addressed and not denied.

Some nights, when the calls were slow, she would think about how different things are outside her cubicle. Good service is not plainly about fixing customer issues. It’s about owning them. It’s about being responsible enough to say, “I understand how you feel,” even when the customer is shouting at you and wants it done their way.

At work, one angry customer can trigger an escalation. In real life, citizens can rage all day and no one ever listens.

At work, if a customer is transferred too many times, that’s a system flaw. In the government, being passed around from one office to another is just normal procedure.

At work, every complaint is documented and resolved. In the government, every complaint becomes a story people laugh or cry about online.

It’s ironic. The foreign company she worked in had stricter standards for serving customers thousands of miles away compared to how some local offices would serve their own people.

On her lunch break, she joined a conversation in the pantry. Someone was venting about renewing a permit. The long lines. The confusing forms. The staff who seemed more interested in gossip than the queue of people waiting to be served. Everyone had a story like that.

Someone mentioned paying “extra” just to speed things up. Someone else laughed and said, “If only the government had a QA team like we do.” That comment stayed with her.

Imagine if public service worked like a call center. There would be quality checks for every transaction. There would be customer feedback forms for every service delivered. There would be coaching sessions for employees who failed to respond politely. There would be metrics. Real and transparent numbers showing how well the government actually serves its citizens.

She wondered what the national CSAT score would look like if citizens could rate their leaders the same way customers would rate agents after every call. Empathy is non-negotiable. Even when the customer is rude, the response must stay calm, understanding, and human. That’s not weakness. That’s professionalism. She’s trained to take accountability even when the problem isn’t her fault because what matters is resolution.

She thought about the bigger picture and felt angry. The way that people in power respond to public issues aren’t always done with the right attitude. Instead of empathy, there’s defensiveness. Instead of fixing the issue, there’s blame-shifting. Instead of “Thank you for bringing this up,” there’s “Stop complaining.”

Transparency is expected. She can’t hide poor performance. Performance data is displayed for everyone to see. The numbers never lie. Reports are reviewed weekly. Taking ownership of mistakes was expected. Humility was part of the job. But in governance, accountability is often buried under long speeches and endless excuses. It’s strange how service failure is a call for improvement in the private sector. In the public sector, criticism is treated like an attack.

During one particularly long shift, a customer told her, “You’ve been the only person who really listened to me.” That line hit her more deeply than usual. It wasn’t just about solving a billing issue. It was about being heard.

She thought about a lot of things that plagued the city and the nation itself. Netizens who beg for help on social media because government hotlines don’t respond. Senior citizens waiting under the heat just to claim benefits. Taxpayers who work hard, only to see their money disappear into bad projects laced with lame excuses.

Customer service is about building trust. You don’t just sell products; you create loyalty to the brand through consistency. Every call is a chance to rebuild trust.

What would happen if public officials thought the same way? What would happen if every project, every policy, and every response to criticism was seen as a chance to rebuild the people’s trust? Trust is currency. Once it’s gone, it takes so much work to earn it back. In politics, it’s often treated like it can be bought back every election season.

Both customer service and governance are forms of leadership. Both are about serving people. The difference is that one is required to measure results, and the other often gets away with slogans.

At work, everyone meets to discuss what went wrong when the team fails a metric. The process is fixed. People are trained again. There’s a culture of constant improvement. But when government systems fail, it’s the people who suffer and not the leaders. No retraining. No scorecard. No honest evaluation. Just rehearsed speeches and outright denial. It sounds idealistic but the parallels are obvious.

The citizens are the government’s customers.

What the citizens really want is what all customers want. To be acknowledged. To be helped. To be treated with respect. Taxes are payments for services. People deserve competence in return and not excuses. It should be done in the same way a customer service representative handles a problem over the phone. Acknowledge the problem. Explain what went wrong. Talk about how it will be fixed. Fix it. Set expectations on when the results will take effect. Professional. Compassionate. Empathetic.

Before ending her shift, she reviewed her performance dashboard. Everything was color-coded. Green for success. Orange for improvement. Red for failure to meet standards. Clear. Transparent. Fair. Realistic. She thought about how refreshing it would be if governance was wired that way; an avenue where citizens can easily see which leaders perform well and which ones need retraining or should be managed out. The same standards that guide customer service should guide public service.

She logged out, finished her last cup of coffee, and walked out into the quiet dawn. The city was waking up. Somewhere, officials will give interviews about progress. Somewhere, citizens will line up for papers and permits. Just another day filled with red tape. Just another day filled with the hassles of bureaucracy.

She has worked in a call center for almost a decade now. The nights felt like days. The days often disappeared in her sleep. It’s a routine life. She will be back again tonight. Headset on. Practicing the kind of governance, she wished that her leaders understood. Serving the people. One customer at a time.