Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Customer service battle for last place

I have been a customer of all three telcos we have here in Singapore - M1, Starhub, and I recently switched to Singtel.

Having experienced all three telcos' customer service, I must say Singtel really takes the lead for having the worst customer service around. Using them as a benchmark, M1 would be top-notch, answering calls to their service line promptly and politely. Starhub has also improved over the years although I must say they seem to favour Starhub users calling from a Starhub mobile line, as opposed to enquiries via email or regular land line. Unfortunately, as of last week, Singtel was the only telco selling the Apple iPhone, and having had waited for that phone for many months already, I decided to sign up with them to buy the phone. If I had been patient, I would be able to buy the phone with M1, or even Starhub in future.

Because of the limited stocks of the iPhone in the past few months, I had been emailing Singtel customer service to request information. It takes about 2 emails to get someone to reply, and then after that it's a fairly long wait for another reply, or you might not get one at all. I sent an email to a customer service officer and left her a message on her answering machine but have had no reply to this day. As for calling 1626, it's perpetually a 45min - 1 hour wait for anybody to get on the line. I know Singtel has the biggest customer base amongst the telcos, but I expect that they should have more officers in their customer service department to handle the high volume of calls, especially when they say they are "committed to providing nothing less than quality products and premium servicing".

I think Singtel should improve their customer service, now with the added customers they would be having with the EPL and ESPN channels they have scored.

2 comments:

Lengleng said...

Sell it off and buy from M1 then.

Singtel has biggest customer base amongst the telcos or lesser doesnt make a difference to the hard core customer officers attitude.
They take their time to answer your calls , enquiries or what they regard... nuisance calls.

Its the lack of concern caring customer services distinct among modern Singaporean customer officers in Singtel. They need special training on giving priorities to handle enquiries,requests whether it be thru emails or phone calls.
Who is a nuisance to them if one is not in need of more information to their products.

Increasing customer officers to handle enquiries on information etc does not solve the issue. The "tidak apa attitude" needs addressing.

M1 + Starhub recruit people with IQ + EQ

The Pseudo Designer said...

Cant buy from M1, im stuck with the Singtel 2 year contract....but I think the customer service officers bad attitude is due to the company's attitude towards CRM anyway.

 
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