The Regional Service Centre Entebbe (RSCE) concluded the recent festivities of the International Client Service Week (ICSW). The four-day event - which operated under this year’s theme ‘Committed and Connected to Serve’ - wrapped up on Thursday 8 October with a celebratory virtual town hall. Lots of other initiatives took place earlier during the week…

The ICSW was jam-packed with different activities for the personnel of the RSCE. The staff has been able to show that they live and breathe by Mahatma Gandhi’s famous statement: ‘The customer is king; he is the most important visitor on our premises’. This not only during the International Client Service Week but just as well during the 51 other weeks of the year.

Parallel with the launch of the video message by the acting Director at the RSCE Paulin Djomo and the sending of the virtual ICSW badges to all staff on Monday, nominations closed for the Service Line of which fellow staff members feel that it delivers best on the UN values of Integrity, Professionalism and Respect for Diversity. At the end of the week, it was revealed that out of the 17 Service Lines/units and sections which received nominations, it is the Cashiers Service Line that managed to collect most. A huge congratulations to winning Service Line Manager Aziz Samba and his team for being chosen by colleagues to have such a high standard of client service excellence!

Another endeavour that took place is the “Pass the Baton” exercise in which the connectivity and commitment of the staff are showcased. In this activity, Service Delivery Managers (SDM) passed on a specific verbal message to their Service Line Managers (SLM) and these messages were passed down to the staff. Each message was passed on from staff to staff on an individual basis. The SLM passed on the message to one staff member via phone call who passed it on to the next staff and onwards till the last person on the list was reached. The exercise proved to be quite difficult as only two service lines turned out to report the same identical message at the end of the chain! The purpose of this exercise was to highlight the importance of listening and communication skills when dealing with and serving clients.

Perhaps the most satisfying day for many during the ICSW was Appreciation Day. On this day, staff members were encouraged to send out signs of appreciation to their clients and colleagues in the form of digital appreciation cards. These cards offered an opportunity to appreciate the staff for their exemplary service even during the last 6 months of working from home, ensuring that excellent service to the clients is maintained. Cards were also sent out to each one of the 20 client missions on the continent which the RSCE supports as well as to DOS Senior Management at UN Headquarters. Most of the UN missions in the field were completely struck by surprise and were extremely thankful for such an unannounced sign of appreciation.

The week was topped off by a virtual town hall during which the winner and runners-up of the best service line were announced. Furthermore, a presentation was shared containing staff voices with various multilingual messages on teamwork, testimonials from the missions on RSCE service as well as creative presentations from some staff. As the very last cherry on the cake, the happy hour organized by the Entebbe Support Base Staff Welfare Committee later on the same day had a Client Service oriented Q&A session, as well as a short quiz, focused around Client Service questions.

The second edition of the ICSW at the RSCE once again showed to be a huge success with a lot of highs and no lows. Eagerly, the centre is already looking forward to the third edition in 2021.