Customer service in Singapore, another pet topic of mine.
Generally it's bad, mostly not atrocious. The worst thing about customer service here though is the 'I can't be bothered' attitude alot of front line staff seem to have.
"i don't know', 'that's another department's job', 'the person in charge is not here'. 'there's nothing I can do'. How often are these phrases and their like heard from customer service staff here?
Friendliness is less of an issue, I don't expect every customer service staff to greet me like an old friend, or even a friend. I don't expect plastic smiles, let alone real ones. What I do expect is that whatever issue I came in for gets resolved, preferably with as little fuss as possible. I find it quite silly that sometimes the service staff at fast food restaurants address the 10-year old kid buying an ice cream cone as sir.
Unfortunately, customer service here has put the cart before the horse. The main point of customer service here it seems is to simply keep on smiling and addressing everyone in the correct manner, yet for a lot of service staff here, their job is simply about making sure the customer turns his or her back and walks out. Job done! Whether or not the issue was resolved ends at that point.
This particular facet of customer service here boils down in large part to the general lack of an accountability culture in this country. No one wants to take responsibility for anything. Pass the buck is the creed.
We see this all the time from the very top, even when dealing with government agencies. A few years back the government decided on a very catchily named 'no closed doors' policy meaning that any enquiry to any government department if incorrectly reached, would find its way to the appropriate agency to be handled. That's all it ever was, a catchy name. No one took responsibility for implementing it at any level.
The best examply I can give is that a year back I consulted a government agency regarding some issues I had with some renovation works I intended to carry out on my (if it could even be argued as ownership) HDB
property.
After much difficulty, I finally managed to extract a name I could speak to. So I went to speak with this person, or brick wall rather.
My issue was that I wanted to change the colour of my window frames througout my unit. My contractor submitted the necessary applications for me. And the excellent organization approved the changing of all the windows for the bedrooms, and left the living room ones pending. At some point in that time, some genius in HDB decided that all living room windows needed to be of a uniform colour (never mind that mine was an old block with a million different colours already!) so they duly disapproved the app for the living area.
So i spoke to this person to explain the absurdity of applying this rule to an old block like mine, and in any case, it was not reasonable of them to approve half my windows, change the rule in the meantime, and disapprove of the rest.
The conversation went along these lines:
'There's nothing I can do, I am just following instructions'.
Instructions from whom?
'There is a group of architects and building engineers who make these rules and they decided this was it'.
Who are this group of people and how do I reach them?
Repeats the whole architect and engineer nonsense to me while pointing at the ceiling the whole time and telling me the people 'above' decided so.
It is this attitude that pervades working culture in Singapore, and of course the customer service industry is no exception.
I will do just enough to get by, evrything else is not my responsibility. I will just hide behind the people 'above'.
It is this attitude I would argue is the single biggest reason why customer service tends to be bad here.
There is of course the issue of linguistic ability, especially with the ever increasing numbers of service staff coming in from China. Some are veryy good, and some are very very bad. Some are good because as a rule, alot of these lower wage foreigners tend to work alot harder, and this filters down to them always trying to improve their skills. Some are really bad because they arguably come from a culture where public and private accountability is even worse.
These foreign workers are cheaper to employ, which of course deflates wages for locals (a necessary evil it seems). It is easy to go on and on about how training will solve all customer service woes here (and it does work in many cases), but the fact remains that people as a rule are able to perform their job well only if they are paid well. It is very hard to take pride in one's job if the pay and working conditions suck.
Especially if it gets shoved into your face everyday how good you have it, and if you disagree with the fact, to be objective and recognize it as being fact, as General PP Peckham who say.
I don't think I would enjoy standing all day 6 days a week getting paid very poorly and yet still be able to give everyone a smile and attend to their every whim or need. People are not happy in their work if they get paid poorly, and it WILL show. Fact is that low wage workers in this country are getting the shortest sharpest end of the stick.
To assuage the simmering resentment of this group of people, it is important to continually impress upon them how good they have it compared to the drudges in some of ASEAN neighbours. When comparing ourselves with richer countries where the low income have a much better quality of life, it is only important to point out how much crime they have on their streets.
I would very much like to hear, 'while I can't help you, you could try option a, b or c', but sadly, we usually never get that to that point, especially if it means the customer service staff actually has to do some work!
End of long rant positioned at extreme end of spectrum as usual.
