Are you happy with the Customer Service?

What is Customer Service?

I was downtown last week, walking around Bukit Bintang and doing some shopping in Pavilion KL and KLCC. I was shocked to experience our own very own customer service in some of the shops. Not a very pleasant experience but there are also some good ones.

The customer service in some of the retail shops was very poor. The promoters hardly welcome any customers. Sometimes they do greet the customers but were very mechanical. If you are lucky, they will notice you walking in or seeking help. Some, choose to ignore the customers.

So what are they doing in the shop?

The smartphone is their best companion at work now. They choose to concentrate on whatever they are doing with their phone rather than serving the customers. They don't even look happy when I asked them about their products, showing me the look as I have interrupted them. I just wonder who is the customer?!

Another incident I had when I approach a promoter at one of the China-based smartphone brands in KLCC. He advised me to go to their website to find out more about the specification of the model I inquire for. I think this is one of the reasons why many prefer to buy online as they don't have to feel disappointed with the services at the retail shop.

If employers are serious about their business and are customer-oriented, it is time to re-examine your customer service, especially at the storefront. Something simple can change the entire service culture of the business. Watch this: What Steve Jobs Learned From The Ritz-Carlton by Forbes

Before And After Haze Invasion

I do not know what to say. See it yourself - Seeing is Believing!!!

LATEST UPDATE on 14th March 2014 at 9.00AM. What do you think is the API now????

KLCC hardly can be sighted...

This morning at 8.50AM (3/3/14)

At 6.05PM

These pictures were taken on 30th January 2014

Education Fair 2013 in Malaysia

Every time when I go to the education fair, I find something is different. I guess I am witnessing the evolution of education industry in Malaysia. 

Most private institutions dominates the main halls in the education fair, with unique constructions of a large area which consist of many booths (12-16 open booths size). Also, there are actually many private higher education providers in Malaysia and growing larger. So far, I don't see any public university there (even if they are there, they will only take very few booths with minimum spending on the booth design). It shows that the private institutions are still more desperate for students than the public. Well, this has always been the norm, just that the private institutions are becoming more competitive and aggressive in sales and marketing.

Secondly, more students involvement in the marketing efforts by various institutions. They call them the 'student helper'. Their task is to give out flyers, goodies and to collect database by stopping everyone to fill up the enquiry form. Some institutions are like those Telcos (in blue, red, yellow t-shirts), assigning there student helper to try to grab anyone who passes by their booths to fill up the form (just like Telcos promoters-signing up a data plan or buying prepaid SIM). I just wonder if this is how education fair suppose to be - "selling" or it should be a place for counselling and to find out about courses available.

In this education fair, there are also some European universities participating under the European Union education booths. Their counsellors are all standing near to their booths welcoming the potential students to approach them to ask about their courses. It is not so much on collecting database as they are mainly here to create the awareness, provide informations and encourage the candidate to apply for their programmes if they are interested; not on "selling".

To some extent, I find that the approach used by many institutions now is more like trying to sell the visitors a product, just like in PC Fair (for ICT) or Matta Fair (for Travel and Tours). It is scary because the institutions are supposed to promote their courses by creating awareness, help the candidates to choose the right course, provide information on financial aid and to cultivate learning and development in younger generations.

What say you?