After finding myself as a local guide and realizing the informative effect of local guides’ contribution, I took a liking to writing my experiences as a customer whenever I visit places of business. My greatest impression of being a local guide is how our contributions tends to make a society better informed about itself. I have writing reviews about customer experiences because I put a great value on getting things done in easier and faster ways, especially for end users [customers]. It also serves the businesses well because they may improve their services if they read reviews about customer experiences. In my home country Nigeria, many businesses do have an idea how customers are treated or how good customer experiences are as there are no good [or maintained] mechanisms of customer feedback.
Just yesterday, I decided to do my sim card upgrade to 4G after receiving so many prompts from the telecommunication company. Despite the massive advertisements about the upgrade, I had to go round almost half of Lagos before I could get it done. I went to four different locations of the company’s offices and they didn’t the capacity to do it. I traveled for about 3 hours round Lagos to do a 20 minutes upgrade. I was lucky at the 5th office. I believe this type of experience needs to be documented in order to inform both the telecommunication company about the strength of issues their offices can handle, and the end users in order to know where to get specific services easily and quickly which will save their time and possibly money too.
Being a local guide gives me privilege to inform people about my little experiences in the hope that it will make such experiences better for whoever gets to read my reviews. Couple this with thousands of contributions from my other fellow local guides in my city, we make the whole city know itself more. This is what I love about being a local guide. When an opportunity that gets these information to policy or decision makers arises, it may result in formulation of better policies that makes our society -better. At this stage, being a local guide will not only make a society be better informed about itself, it will make a society improve itself. Just being part of this excites me.