Proactive or Reactive?

As usual on this day I woke up to a very beautiful morning with my affirmations in my mind and tongue.Normally am always an excited soul but today was particularly special for me because i was set to get a proper job and i would get to show up to the office with my special lucky ties and my not so expensive suits that i was proud of, having saved for them for a while. I was getting ready to go apply and collect my NSSF and NHIF cards, to me these were the start of independence not really financially but physically from the dependence on my folks and psychologically to my path towards all my dreams and goals as well as my one way ticket to adulthood and responsibilities. At some point as i was taking a shower it hit me that officially my folks will allow me to parent myself.
Being the new technologically improved Kenya I would easily access these medical insurance and retirement benefits cards from our existing government services hubs famously known as Huduma Centers. Based on how they were packaged and presented on the media as well as my prior visits experience i knew that it was easy in and easy out as usual. On arrival I patiently waited on the five persons' queue to pick my service number ticket and then wait for my turn to be served. An hour later after the seat had become too hot to sit on and my stomach to hungry to continue i stood up and surprisingly it was my turn to get served and headed on to the NSSF desk only to be turned away because i did not know that i needed to pay. You can understand that at the time i was particularly overcoming a financial drought, the ever flowing streams of my parents' pockets dried up after all i craved growing up and I had graduated. I slowly walked away acting as if i was trying to find a mobile money agent as I laughed at my ignorance and at the fact that i was there for an hour and there was no such information on the payment required and neither did the original assistant handing out ticket numbers advise me despite seeing what exactly i was there to do. That is how i went back home disappointed and the realization that growing up was not as exciting after all.
I would probably rate my experience as the worst i have ever gone through at a Huduma center but still as a customer i set up barriers to protect myself even though i knew i would not stop using the convenient center. Looking at the bigger picture here most businesses tend to fall into the same trap of being reactive other than proactive when it comes to customer service and translating the needs of the customers in due time. In the long run this adversely affects the overall customer experience, and just like one wise man stated 'humans tend to forget all the good that exists and tend to focus on the bad because they are guided by the fear of going through a bad experience again' To illustrate this further i might use my own example A proactive customer service officer would advise me on the process at the entrance since they had seen which services i was seeking from the tickets and if time would be of the essence when they are serving a lot of people they would have gotten simple legible posters on the wall outlining the processes and procedures. A reactive customer waited for me to get at the front of the queue only to turn me back with the processes i should have followed.
The point here is to always maintain the positive customer experience every single time they walk in to your establishment as if it is the first time you have met them.