The Pandemic`s Contribution To Inequality For People In The Customer Service Industry
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Introduction
Covid 19 has undoubtedly expectedly shaped current day society. From its first appearance in Wuhan as of 2019 to current times since its enabled outbreak on the entire world population. This sudden and unexpected break in society infrastructures although theorized to take place could not in any way have been predicted to be this severe on a worldwide stage and of this magnitude. Although a large number of industries have greatly suffered the largest afflicted by this pandemic would in all essence be the customer service industry. Such industries include telecom, eCommerce, retail, financial, insurance, banking, transportation, logistics, travel, and hospitality, etc. This fall or sudden halt of work in such sectors has led to a large sum of other problems occurring that have greatly created a massive wave of inequality. My aim in this paper is to further understand just how great the pandemic has affected our society and thus try to find a means on how to address said issues to achieve social equality that ensures that society, in general, does not further deteriorate because of the pandemic.
A perfect case example to look at would be the hospitality industry which has experienced an unprecedented challenge due to the covid 19 pandemic (UNWTO, 2020). Although approaches to flatten the curve and reduce the number of people infected by covid was a smart enough idea to help everyone as a whole it has however undoubtedly lead to the closure of most hospitality businesses (Bartik et al., 2020) and thus significantly lead to the laying off of a large number of employees in such sectors. This has in turn lead to people being unable to afford basic needs like paying rent and thus in turn lead to an inequality problem due to a lack of basic income for people to live off. Not all businesses closed down completely as some were allowed to do take-outs for some of their customers while restrictions started to ease up and the economy started to pick up little by little with restaurants being allowed to re-open but with a limited capacity of people inside them who would adhere to social distancing guidelines.
Preliminary findings on the hospitality industry have further given shocking conclusions that even after the pandemic ends it may not entirely mean that the hospitality and customer service industry may recover entirely by seeing a rise in customers (Gursoy et al., 2020). The finding states that a large number approximately 50% of the population may not be comfortable going back to restaurants immediately. This will in turn mean that a lot of the hospitality sector may not in turn fully recover since a large number is dependent on their customers.
Addressing the Inequality
An easier way to address this inequality would be to fix the whole pandemic issue as a whole and thus allow us to return to day-to-day activities but unfortunately, that is easier said than done. Society as a whole has already greatly suffered from this pandemic although fixing the whole pandemic issue would greatly benefit all of us it is, unfortunately, one of many other problems caused by covid that we have to tackle. The general breakdown of most industries has to be addressed and also the all-time high unemployment number in the country due to covid. To solve this issue would greatly benefit the country in the long run but it would require a short time loss especially in terms of financing the said industries. A basic form of income would have to be established for people laid off due to covid as this would allow them to take care of themselves for a time being until the covid issue has been addressed. Another means to also help society as a whole to recover from this pandemic would be a financial support scheme supported by the government to help the various businesses affected by covid stay afloat until they recover fully.
These plans although seem not at all sufficient enough to everybody as a whole they are good enough to help our economy recover from this disaster and in the long run prevent a much large wealth inequality gap that we may not be able to recover from.
Conclusion
The situation is dire but not entirely unrecoverable support of our service sector, unfortunately, is an unavoidable thing. My paper as a whole has examined just how much the service sector is in need and in turn given a conclusive enough reason of how we can further avoid making the situation even worse. Financial support is a must to this sector sooner rather than later.
The pandemic as a whole keeps on exerting a profound impact on our society as a whole and whether or not the current state of the pandemic will continue to be the norm will greatly depend on how we tackle it as a society. All in all, the problem is very clear and the underlying outcome of how a large number of people will greatly be affected remains the same. If the sudden rise of unemployment remains the same then the inequality gap will keep on increasing since a large group of people will not have a sufficient way of getting income. To combat this issue, we need to come up with an efficient way to provide a basic income to a large number of people who have been affected by the pandemic, especially in the customer service industry. By doing this we greatly keep a large number of people from near poverty conditions and further give the society more time to recover and in turn help people meet the basic requirements they need to survive until conditions change again for the better. Although this plan seems potentially quite costly the greater cost we would suffer would be in the long run when we as a society fail to find a sufficient enough workforce or a major fall in most if not all our service industry.
Although governmental support is necessary other forms of financial support should also be considered especially ones in which would be useful and detrimental to people working in the customer service industry.
References
Gursoy, D., & Chi, C. G. (2020). Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on hospitality industry: Review of the current situations and a research agenda.
World Tourism Organization. Market Intelligence, & Promotion Section. (2007). UNWTO world tourism barometer (Vol. 5). World Tourism Organization.
