Developing the mediation market

Writing this Column has become to me a unique learning experience. As a small business enthusiast, I have found myself ruminating all over again the business nugget that admonishes entrepreneurs to strive to establish businesses that customers are   looking out for, rather than businesses that are in search of the customer. Sound as this business idea would appear to be, it nonetheless seems to me that occasions do arise when a business is blessed with customers whom it must seek for reasons of its peculiarity.

I find no objection to the classic analogy that the food and drinks business is a business customers are in search of. When you establish an Eatery or a Relaxation Spot in an accessible location, you basically do not need advertisement beyond a smart signboard or banner to draw customers’ attention. People who are hungry or in search of good food will naturally walk in of their own volition. In that genre of entrepreneurial start up, you probably only will be needing significant advertisement if your culinary skills have some question marks or the location you have chosen requires some push for easy identification.

If you consider the foregoing analogy as too farfetched for the comparison I have set out to make today with the business of mediation service providers, then the example of the rush for good schools will suffice. Good schools need little or no advertorial push.  They are easily populated by word of mouth referrals. And when admission time comes, parents fall over each other to have their kids enroll. The foregoing do not however reflect the circumstances of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) business. Despite the glowing attributes attached to its outcomes, the business of alternative dispute resolution still remains one in search of its customers.

The market for ADR is huge but latent. To some observers however, it would appear that promoters of the ADR practice are running on the wrong road in the bid to get the trigger for the business .They take strong exception to the scenario wherein the time and money put into training of more mediators and arbitrators far outweigh corollary efforts to educate the user public on the desirability of using the process to resolve multiplicity of disputes. Yet if ADR is to make any significant in-route into our jurisprudence, massive education and buy-in of the user public is the place to start.

Developing the ADR market would require deliberate activities such as regular seminars and workshops; newspaper publications, radio and television programmes as well as in-house journals of the service providers to educate the user public. Corporate organizations which desire to use the medium of ADR to resolve customer challenges and disputes would do well to follow the lead of the Nigerian Shippers Council by giving support to credible public efforts at user education. It can never be too much or too little, as every contribution counts. The user publics need to know that mediation services are available to them in the resolution of their business challenges. They need to know that they have a voice on how these matters are resolved and the speed with which same is accomplished. Thankfully this is the message that has now been consistently put out in the maritime sector. Yes, it is true that the maritime industry  regularly faces  business challenges of both local and international dimensions; that is not to say however that the industry is alone in such experiences. What with user experiences in Communications, Energy and the medical sub sectors? I suppose the difference is all about corporate leadership and customer service orientation.

Just recently, I got exposed to a mass market for mediation services, when for a different purpose I enrolled for a three months course at the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies in Ilorin, Kwara State.  I confess that prior to enrolling for the program in Industrial and Labour Relations I had no significant knowledge of the fact that every Nigerian business or corporation does require a good dosage of ADR services in the relationship between management and workforce. It is perhaps this knowledge gap, even in high official places, that has been responsible for much of the industrial unrest we experience in private and government organizations.

For those who may also not have known this before now, the Trade Disputes Act specifically excludes the courts from intervening in labour disputes until all of the ADR processes of Negotiation, Mediation, Conciliation and Arbitration have been fully exhausted.  It is only when these fail that recourse may be made to the National Industrial Court which has exclusive jurisdiction in labour and related issues. If labour leaders would claim to know these facts, what percentages of their followers do? Herein comes the need for us practitioners to develop and build the mediation market through enlightenment and educational services targeted at the right user audiences.