These days, out of every five letters that gets written to the forum page, one of them would be complaining about poor customer service in Singapore. OK, I haven’t done an actual statistical count yet, but I imagine the frequency of Singaporeans compraining to The Straits Times forum page about taxi drivers, Nokia, Sentosa etc. etc. is about there. Here’s a recent one:
Feb 25, 2008
Customer service: Singapore lags behind Australia
I AM a Singaporean studying at a prestigious university in Australia.
After staying here for about two-and-a-half years, I have to say that most Australians provide great customer service.
For example, when I am ordering my meal at a fast-food eatery, the Australians never fail to smile at me and ask: ‘How are you?’ or ‘How’s your day?’ before taking my orders.
I am back in Singapore for my summer vacation and I had the opportunity to experience disgustingly poor customer service at Best Denki Takashimaya.
On Monday, Feb 18, at about 7.30pm, I went to Best Denki Takashimaya to collect a hair dryer which I had reserved.
However, one of the employees, Lewis, told me he had sold the hair dryer to someone else and there was no available stock in the shop.
He insisted that he sold it because I did not pick up the phone when he rang twice that afternoon. However, I had previously confirmed that I was going to collect the reserved item that day.
Then, Lewis checked with other Best Denki branches to see whether they had the item available and it turned out that Best Denki Plaza Singapura had the hair dryer that I wanted.
He told me to pay at Takashimaya since I was using Taka vouchers and that I should personally collect the product from Best Denki Plaza Singapura.
I refused and wanted the hair dryer to be sent to Takashimaya for collection. I told him it was not my fault that he had sold the reserved product. Furthermore, he argued that Best Denki does not provide branch to branch delivery service, and insisted once again that I make a trip to Plaza Singapura.
I went straight to the customer service counter and repeated my hair dryer story to two other staff members but I was shocked to be completely ignored by them. A third female worker then attended to me but, after finishing my story, she said that it was none of her business and that I should be asking the person who was directly involved, the one who sold my reserved product.
In the end, Lewis relented and said his colleague would send the hair dryer over. I told them that I would be back before the shop closed (it closes at 10pm). At 9pm, I received a call from Best Denki and a female worker demanded that I collect my hair dryer immediately because she was about to ‘knock off’ from work.
I was unable to do this as I was in the middle of dinner with my friends.
I think the staff at Best Denki Takashimaya were mostly rude and clearly oblivious to what consumer sovereignty and customer service mean. None of them apologised during the whole incident nor for my time wasted. I needed help but help was not given. I wonder if Best Denki is sincere about their customers.
In my opinion, Singapore’s customer service standards are nowhere comparable to those of Australia. However, I am looking forward to seeing an improvement.
We do pay for the 10 per cent service charge on top of our bill, don’t we?
Low Yin Siu (Ms)
The letter’s here, though I’m not certain when the letter will get archived and no longer publicly accessible.
There were lots of comments on this letter in the ST discussion room. For starters, several asked why it was necessary for Ms. Low to tell everyone that she was studying at a “prestigious” Australian university. Still others remarked that given Ms. Low’s attitude, it’s not surprising that she got poor service.
Ironically, Ling and I were at Best Denki at Great World City the other weekend, and there was this cluster of five shop employees gathered around the camera section chit-chatting. OK, maybe there weren’t any shop patrons that needed assistance, but it struck me that the five of them seemed to be having a pretty jolly time instead of doing their rounds. Mind you, I’m not making any sort of claim here about Best Denki’s service, since we had pretty good service at the old Thomson Plaza outlet while we were looking for our living room Plasma TV years ago.
But the letter got me thinking: as much as some of us like to claim we get bad service in Singapore, how many of us as customers really deserve good customer service to begin with? I don’t think Singaporeans are naturally rude. I’m pretty certain we can be polite if we want to, but it involves making the extra little effort that we forget about since we’re typically in a rush to do everything quick. I’ve not been in the service industry before, unless you’re one of those modernists who thinks that education is a service industry. But I think being polite to the person serving you not only makes the recipient happy, it’d make me happy too. It really goes both ways. Whenever the uncle serving chicken rice or the Malay auntie who brings me my favorite plate of Pineapple rice at my faculty canteen, they get my biggest, warmest smile with a “thank you auntie!”, and I get one in return too.
Several weeks ago, we were at the Esso station near Rivervale getting our petrol pumped into our Latio, when we got one of the petrol assistants to help clean the windscreen for us. I remarked to Ling that when the uncle was done, we really should say a big thank you. I remembered Ling wrinkling her eyebrows, and remarking “But it’s his job, isn’t it dear?” Thing is, it could very well be – but I still think we should go out of our way if necessary to express gratitude. In any event, the uncle finished the cleaning on my – the driver’s – side, so he got the cheerful thank-you from me.
I’m happy to report that the next time we had our windscreen cleaned at the petrol station, both of us this time did our very best bit for the (defunct) Singapore Courtesy Campaign.
All that said, it still stands to fact that on the roads, between the both of us, I’m the one who still has anger management issues. Sigh.:(
The Singapore Flyer is one of our little island’s newest tourisy-attraction. My sis-in-law Jasmine has gone up for the ride, as has Ling and mum-in-law; and from all accounts, it seems a ride worth taking. Ling has plans to bring Matt up for a ride too.
