Richard Seah
For want of 10 cents, I once nearly made a mess of myself. It could have been worse. I could have made a mess of the place I was at – the Maxwell Road Food Centre.
I am talking about those public toilets operated by turnstiles. You deposit a coin and the turnstile lets you in.
From the toilet operator’s – in this case the National Environment Agency – perspective, this system is fantastic. It gets to collect money automatically, without even having to engage a low wage worker. And the money is no small change. Just five toilet users per minute adds up to $30 per hour, to a couple of hundred dollars per day!
For that sum of money collected, the toilet user or “customer” gets zero “customer service” in return. If you have a very full bladder but don’t happen to have 10 cents, that’s your problem. What if you are on the verge of diarrhoea? It may no longer be only your problem!
This is no a small issue. For it is a symptom of a much bigger one, where services are provided primarily from the perspective of convenience and profit for the service provider, while the welfare of the customer takes a back seat. This is one of the fundamental reasons why service standards in Singapore are generally poor. There is no service culture.
A case in point. Last year, I wrote a number of letters to the press pointing out that the Fairprice X-tra outlet at AMK Hub consistently failed to implement its “Express Lane” service by serving customers with more than 10 items in their shopping baskets.
After my second letter was published, because the situation did not change for several weeks after Fairprice said it would look into the matter, the communications manager and communications director invited me to tea, purportedly to hear my feedback. But even before we met, they had already decided what to do – change the signage from “Express Lane. Not more than 10 items” to “Serving single basket shoppers only”.
I pointed out that a single basket could hold 50 or even 100 small items. They pointed out that, from the operations viewpoint, it is easier to do it this way than for cashiers to face the unpleasant task of re-directing shoppers who abuse the Express Lane. In fact, with the “single basket” system, there is nothing for cashiers to implement, since those lanes are blocked by railings and trolleys cannot get through anyway.
Oh well. People like me who qualify for the Express Lane are only small customers. Better for Fairprice to lose me than to lose those aunties who queue up at the Express Lane with full baskets. I felt so foolish to think that I mattered.
Also at AMK Hub, the DBS Bank near the basement has ATMs that allow only minimum withdrawals of $200. The first time I discovered this was very late one night. I did not have $200 to withdraw. So I had take the bus home and then walk a few hundred metres to use the ATM “near” my house. When I raised this matter with the bank, the customer service officer pointed out that there are other ATMs in the building. True. But at past midnight that night, most of those other ATMs were no longer accessible, except for one outside the building, quite far away. Walking there and back would have meant that I missed my last bus home.
To DBS’ credit, it did not seem to have introduced similar ATMs elsewhere. But whoever thought of that idea in the first place was clearly thinking more about the bank’s – rather than its customers’ – convenience.
I never knew what banking convenience could mean until last year, when I acquired a Citibank credit card and used a non-DBS/POSB ATM for the first time. Whoa! I encountered a cash deposit machine (in Singapore) that has the flexibility to accept not just $10 notes and higher denominations, but also $5 and $2 notes. Previously, I only saw such machines in Malaysia.
And the first time I withdrew money from a Citibank ATM, I was most pleasantly surprised. The $300 that I withdrew did not come as six pieces of $50 notes (as what DBS/POSB would have given me), but included five pieces of $10 notes, just in case I needed small change. “How very thoughtful,” I thought to myself. For once, I felt cared for. I felt served. And I could not help but wonder why this service had to come from a foreign and not a local bank.
Still on the subject of banks, have you noticed that nowadays, most banks have their counter services on the upper level? While the ground floor is reserved for marketing investment products? Never mind if fewer people use the investment services. They have greater value.
Yes, banks now have ATMs, internet banking and other convenient services that make it largely unnecessary for people like me to use their counter services, except when I wish to cash a cheque. But who are the people who now need to walk up and down that flight of stairs? People like my sister who are uneducated (she does not feel comfortable to use an ATM card) and old!
Many years ago, my sister ran a hawker stall and I once accompanied her to renew her hawker licence. As you know, most government departments have long stopped handling cash. And it so happened that day that the NETS payment system was down. But can any government department exercise flexibility? Sorry. No cash. Wait.
Fortunately, the system was up and running again after about half an hour, so it wasn’t too bad. While waiting, I asked the officer what if the system was down for a long time. “Pay by cheque,” he replied matter-of-factly, as if the average hawker carries a cheque book.
Cashless payments remind me of the National Library. Ah! Finally they got the system sorted out and users can now pay their overdue fines using a choice of cards: NETS, Cashcard, Transit Link, etc. But boy did they take a long time. I remember for a good many years, it used to be Cashcard or nothing. I remember once walking a great distance to buy a Cashcard, for $10 or whatever sum, I forgot, just to pay a few cents worth of fines. (I had the option of paying later, but heck, I wanted to get it done with.) And then, as a step improvement, some library branches accepted more types of cards than others. If I am not wrong, it took more than 10 years from the introduction of cashless payment to reach today’s standard of convenience and service.
It may seem that I am harping on the distant past. But I bring this up to show how deeply rooted this attitude is. The government’s insistence on cashless transactions long ago set the precedence of putting the service provider’s convenience ahead of the user’s.
Meanwhile, another unhappy trend crept in – the privatisation of public services. And so we now have public transport, healthcare, telecommunications, electricity and more essential services all run by corporations with profits as top priority and public service somewhere further down. This is another topic for another time.
For now, let me end off with another example. If you ride the MRT around the Northern part of Singapore, you will hear announcements advising that if you wish to go to Johor Baru, you should alight at Woodlands Station and take Bus Service 950.
This sounds like a helpful public service announcement. It is not. Because if you do wish to go to Johor Baru, the far better option would be to alight at Kranji Station, which is closer to the customs checkpoint and which has three bus services – SBS 170 and CW1, plus SBS 160 across the road – heading towards Johor Baru. At Kranji, you just walk out of the station and chances are, there are buses waiting for you. In contrast, at Woodlands, you need to walk a long way to the Service 950 bus stop… and wait. If you are unlucky (as I once was), you might meet an extra long queue and need to wait for the second bus to come before you can board.
Why, then, are commuters being given this piece of poor advice? Ahhhhh! It’s because Service 950 is run by SMRT, the same company that runs the train that they are riding. So what sounds like a public service announcement, for the benefit of the public, is in fact an advertisement, for the benefit of the transport company. Don’t be fooled!
Yeah, you still get served in the end. But only after the service provider has served itself.
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that’s why these GLCs need spurs in their hides to wake them up. more competition and a pro-active consumer association (not CASE) should do the trick
This is typical of Singapore. Even with increase in public transport fares, we don’t see decrease in waiting time, and we still get pack like sardines.
I would like to the author’s list of self serving service providers.
Prior to the introduction of the new EZ Link cards, Giro auto top-ups for the old EZ Link cards were free.
After the “upgrade”, they want to charge me an additional 25 cents per auto top-up. In addition, I had to pay an extra 3 dollars for a new card because my old card was a student card.
Their so-called “upgrade to serve you better” only ended up with me having to incur more costs and regress to manual top-ups instead…
you want easy you pay extra. you want wait long long also you pay extra. you don’t want anything also you must pay, like the medisave.
As a tourism student, my final year project this year is to do up a ‘tourism satisfaction index’, emulated from HongKong Polytechnic-University’s index as well.
As the results come about, we now realise that tourists are only moderately satisfied.
Then we had to think of recommendations/solutions to improve tourist satisfaction.
But it was easier said than done, just our advisor for the project already bombarded us with so many questions about our ideas.
Those that seems solid enough had loads of red tape to go through if it is in real life.
THEN THERE IS THE ATTITUDE OF S’POREANS. Oh wells, with corporations doing this, service will not get better except for the rare few.
I’ve subscribed to Singtel home telephone service.
I called to say that I did not want IDD call service, including calls to Malaysia, to prevent children, for example, from calling overseas.
I was told that while IDD service can be dis-abled, calls to Malaysia cannot be dis-abled and I have to pay a monthly fee to apply for a phone-lock service if I want to block calls to Malaysia.
So, they provide me with a service I do not want (calls to Malaysia)and then I’m told I have to pay a monthly fee if I don’t want that service.
Great example, Chee Keong. I bet a lot of people don’t know this. I don’t!
In the lead article, it was mentioned that the citbank atm dispense some ten dollar notes and it was thought to be a great idea by the author.
I think this is wrong interpretation. ATM’s dispense ten dollar notes when they are running low in cash inside the machine. I had ten dollar notes dispensed from DBS atm’s too. It’s got nothing to do with customer service.
Anyway, for some people, getting ten dollar note from the machine is a nuisance, so i fail to see the author’s line of thinking.
I also don’t understand why the author is grumbling about ten cents entry fee to toilets using turnstiles. The essential point is whether the toilets are cleaned once a day or not, so that we have a good customer experience for the 10cents payment. This was not mentioned in the article, so i fail to see the author’s point again.
Also, it is unreal that we cannot get access to a ten cent coin when we are in need to go to the loo. Toilets are public places, one can always ask a passerby for small change or a shopkeeper to change 20c or 50c. I can’t see any problem.
zero
Reminds me when my mother went for some kind of plan under “privileged banking”. There’s someone(who can speak English) to serve you premium tea or coffee in a fancy teacup, some nice highly dressed lady/man ready to “explain” all the details to you. Also, the lounge is highly spacious and extremely exquisite, with ultra-comfy sofas and classy-sounding music playing in the background. And if there’s anything wrong, someone will be willing to go the extra mile to help you and even show a certain display of concern in you and your family. Some of the schemes, btw, for privileged banking require at least half a million to 1 million or more, for admittance.
Compared to privileged banking, banking for the normal souls has longer queues, not so great service and sometimes, very grumpy staff. Also, if there are any problems, you will have to “chase” the staff to rectify those because they don’t always pay full attention while serving you. Considering that slight problems can translate into bigger headaches(like problems with the mortgage), it does pay to be super vigilant, when checking your paperwork.
Btw, I have never invested in any of those kind of high-end schemes. I just don’t have that kind of money and only have a pittance.
Richard, Jurong Point has a DBS atm which only allows you to withdraw $200. There could be more of such ATM elsewhere
Paul,
Alamak, I had wanted to add a line that I did not go around to check but did not. Should have done it. Yeah now I think probably got more elsewhere.
Boo! to DBS.
Richard,
I just want to point out that DBS limiting withdrawals to S$200 or more at the AMK Hub basement branch has actually helped cleared up the human traffic flow there.
Before that, the small DBS branch and the small public corridor outside that area (which leads to an escalator to the bus interchange and the underpass to AMK MRT) would be jam-packed with long queues of people waiting to use the ATMs, clogging up the high-traffic area even more.
I have no thoughts on whether DBS should have done it or not. Just my observation that it has made it a lot easier to move around that area.
Wei Meng,
That must have been an unintended “side effect”. But if DBS really did it to ease pedestrian traffic flow, thumbs up to them for such civic consciousness.