Read the fucked-up perspective, by Liang Dingzi.
The imperative to provide satisfactory service rests
entirely with the provider. How the customer responds
is his prerogative. Generally, good service will elicit kind responses. A
service provider cannot demand good responses as a
pre-condition for his willingness to smile and serve.
Wah, since you want to make sweeping statements, I shall follow, meekly behind you and hold your shoes can?
I dont deny the fact that service staff must be providing satisfactory services, and must be willing to smile. But like I once and again stress, customers arent always right. Not that you are paying for a product in the boutique I worked at I must agree with your attitude. Not that you are going to sign up a handphone plan with my company then I must smile while you continue to verbally abuse me.
This man, has either been living under a rock all his life and had never seen a nasty customer, or he is a nasty customer himself.
On a general whole, singaporean customers are handfuls to deal with. They think since they are paying they can lash out at waitresses at resturants. Sometimes I wonder do they think that the money they paid for the meal has included charges for scolding the waitress, so if they dont scold they felt they had lose out to other patrons.
Or are they displaying their superiority to their dates by being insolent to service crew, not-too-subtly telling their dates "See, I command power!!"
It just protrays a lack of taste in my opinion. I would gladly set these people on flames if not for the fact that yuan yuan xiang bao he shi liao. But this fact constrained by my actions, not my thoughts. I continue to condemn friends who are rude at service staff, telling them off if they are being bitches to them.
You may say that I am on the service provider's side because I am in service line. But hallo, I've never been a nasty customer ever before, not even when I wasnt in service yet. So this perspective isnt grown and matured due to my current job.
I had always been an above average service provider, and I can assure you that the only reason I cant promise I am a superby good service provider is that there are nasty customers. I treat all customers with basic respect like how I would treat a normal person. I dont carry their balls, licking their feet or what, but I would take them as how any person would like to be treated with.
But my service level is at adverse proportion to the offensive nature of customers. The poorer their attitude is, the less lightly would I be going an extra mile for him.
Once a customer screamed at me for 10 minutes straight, after I greeted "Good afternoon, can I speak to Mr XXX? I'm calling from (company's name)."
At first I tried to calm him down, but that only agitated him further, so I kept quiet and listen and took notes while he went on and on.
1 mins.
3 mins... ...
6 mins.... ... ... .... ..............
He never stopped screaming his complaint, and I was slowly losing my patience. I stopped uh-huh-ing to his sentences, and I just slump in my chair and started to draw stars on the paper while he repeated the same story again and again.
Trust me, given a common person, without preparation, however much you would like to complain you also cant talk coherently. If you had repeated this story for 3,5 times before (to your own friends over roti prata and kopi-o-gao), you might be able to organise your complaint more systematically, and lash out at me for 5 or 6 mins.
But if this is the first time you voiced this complaint, more likely than not, your stand isnt clear, and you are beating ard the bush to make the issue look bigger. But the fact is, within most 30 seconds, we service staff already know what you want, if only you stop shrieking and listen us out.
So after I went silent for a while, he suddenly realised I am not acknowledging his words by uh-huh-ing. He barked at me, demanding to know if I was listening. I told him I was, all along, but he is not giving me a chance to talk, so I shall just keep quiet until he finish his piece.
I solved his problem there and then, but there was never a word of thanks. He just complain about something else, saying that "See, you all can solve one, but always like to push responsibility to one and other."
I simply retorted (I wished I could sound as rude as I felt):
"I dont mean to be rude, but I never had the intention to push this job to another person, but if I did, it would only be because you have been screaming for 10 minutes and I feel I cant communicate with you."
"This is to teach you! You people had always been so rude to me!"
"Mr X, I trust that my colleagues hasnt been rude to you. We are neutral to all customers. But given that before I can say anything specific you already began to scream for 10 minutes, I am taking you are doing the same to my other colleagues once you hear their voices. We do listen you out, but if you wouldnt listen to us, we are not able to communicate."
Towards end of the conversation, he listened more than he did before. He still never said thanks, but his attitude was better, though still sounds like he is itching for a quarrel.
Sure, there are nasty customers and there will always
be. But they call for a different response, not bad service.
Honestly, any different responses than smiles and apologies to an angry customer is considered a bad service to you. Agreed?
Given a scenario. (Someone complaint about a service standard he recieved on sgforums sometime ago.)
A person bought a piece of apparel and the staff apparently forgot to remove the sensory tag. Once home, this person was surprised to realised of the tag, and proceed to remove it himself.
Now, everyone knows that these tags have unremovable ink in them, and once this tag is tampered with, the ink will leak and spoilt the cloth. This means was to avoid people from shoplifting because they wont be able to remove the tag themselves.
This person, absolutely pissed, brought back the buy and demand a compensation. The shop acknowledged that they have been careless with the handling, and adviced this person to pick out another piece.
This person combed the entire shop, but the original piece was the final piece, and there isnt another piece that he liked. So he demanded a money back.
On the forums, this person reasoned that he paid for the piece, so when the piece is spoilt, he should get a money back. He said that it is the shop's fault for not removing the tag, their fault that he had to make a special trip back, their fault for not having another of the same piece, their fault for not having another piece that he like, and their fault for not allowing a money back.
The staff at the shop might had been careless, but was it really that difficult to bring back the piece to the shop to request for their assistance? I am quite certain that if this person had called to inform of the incident, even if he requested that he return a week or two later, the shop would be more than willing to assist.
So back to the another responses theory. In the face of an angry customer, please choose one of the following that applies.
1// manager smiles and apologises profusely, rectify the error by offering money back (nevermind the store would lose the value of two items, one damaged, one returned to customer).
2// manager explained to customer how the incident occurs, apologise.
3// manager vaguely explained that staff is new, wasnt too familiar with processes, apologise.
4// manager tell customer that the apparel is damaged, he is not not exchanging (and not apologising).
5// manager tell customer since he no longer has the reciept, he cannot be sure this piece is from my store.
To a common customer, one option 1 is acceptable. Options 2 or 3 are inexcusable because the customer never hear the word 'sorry' for 151436 times. Options 4 and 5 are totally unforgivable, the store is wrong, wrong, WRONG! I graced their store leh! How can they do this! I am reporting this to C.A.S.E.
Both parties have faulted, but being the customer, he immediately felt that he could accuse the store and staff since CIAR.
Nonsense.
I am not rebuting everything that Mr Liang said in the article, for example, I agreed fully with this sentence.
Unfortunately, in many large organisations, the CEO
is so far removed from the customer that the only
time he comes into contact with one is when he
receives a letter of complaint. By then, the damage
has already been done.
Absolutely correct viewpoint. In many large organisations, the biggest bosses are often detached from their customers. Heck, usually customer can only communicate with the first line of frontliners, or at the most get to the supervisor behind this first line.
Calculated in this way, the biggest bosses are usually after the 7th or 8th line. Of course lah, they are earning big money, and their hourly pay is more than my weekly pay, so I shouldnt expect any CEOs to be handling my complaint personally la hor. I should be absolutely delighted if I managed to ooze thru to the third level of service superiority.
Yay yay yay, while I am on the topic of service, let me laugh at 2 incidents that I experienced with colleagues from another department.
Incident 1:
I needed a certain contact number of a staff from the jb branch, so I called up jb's gen line and enquiry with the lady who answered.
"Hi, xxx JB? I'm calling from xxx singapore, do you know of how can I reach miss sonia?"
"You can call 1800-xxx-xxxx. That is the singapore hotline." The robot croaks.
"Hmm, yah, but I would like to speak to miss sonia, she is from your JB side. Do you have her extension number, or can you transfer the line?"
"You can call 1800-xxx-xxxx. That hotline would be able to answer your questions."
"Yah, I would if I am looking for a singaporean staff. But I am looking for a JB staff."
"Have you tried? How do you know cannot?"
Raised my voice. "Excuse me!!! I am calling from xxx singapore! That 1800-xxx-xxxx number IS THE SINGAPORE HOTLINE! I am not asking for general enquires, I want to speak to miss sonia, and she is from your JB side. Do you not understand my english?"
*Puts me on hold and a guy came to phone.*
"Sorry, that is a new staff, you want to reach sonia? I give you her direct extension. Or do you want to complain abt her? I can give you her manager's number."
Huh?!?! WTF?
Did I say anything about complaining? All I wanted was to check with her regarding a customer's acct. And this guy. What's is his motive, why is he suggesting that I should complain? Qi guai. Complain you two silly staff then you know.
Then when I eventually got to sonia, I explained to her regarding how a customer wants her to get back to him. She told me blah blah blah blah, so I was taking down notes and wanted to double confirm how I should be explaining to customer.
She just retorted "Aiyah, you just want me to call right? Ok lor, I pity you, I help you to call."
-_-"
After the whole incident, all I was thinking about is that how they are ceasing hiring and contract renewing on the singapore side, but going to hire more at the JB side. At this kind of service standards, the phrase "lousy service" would take on a whole new meaning.
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