Of Service in Chilli padi Land

Due to the recent spotlight on Singapore's service level and the endless emphasis on good service in Gonzales' services marketing class, I have been irritated sufficiently to blog my 2 cents worth of cynical opinions here.

Yes, Singapore's service level does suck in many places. We complain non-stop about the bloody salesgirl who is more interested in her rebonded hair than us --> the dear, most important, alwaiz right customers' needs. About the slow servers at Swensens, the sulky faced counter staff and the sully looking salesger who gives you a sian look for not buying anything. Salesmen who adopt a stalker style appraoch, tailing you around his 'territory' in Harvey Norman.

Gonzales talk repeatedly about training staff, motivating staff, having checkpoints, solicitating for customer surveys. These people are in LALALAND. I'll probably fail my paper if Gonzales sees this, but this is REALITY.

Come on! People who write about this stuff are sitting in their air-con offices, fighting to get their next article posted in some journal like Marketing Science. Have they ever worked a day as a shoe salesger, driven a cab, or waitressed?

The simple problem is MONEY. How much does a salesger at Charles n Keith get for a month of staring at people's ugly toenails? $1000 give or take a couple of hundred. LALALAND DENIZENS can consider paying a decent wage to MOTIVATE employees. Factor in spending public holidays and weekends spent servicing an endless stream of Singaporean women with shoe fetishes(moi included), but can't afford On Peddar or the likes of Stuart Weitzman and Jimmy Choo. And worse still can't decide whether she wants black brown or both (moi included). And you get the idea how bad life is.

Factor in a stressful work environment with motivating techniques such as high sales quotas and leave that you somehow are never able to claim and how do you expect these folks to wish you a geniune goodday and smile at every customer?

Just keep it real, efficient and fuss free and its good enuf for me.

In case I risk sounding like a film critic, i shall relate my very own experience. During one particular end-of-year vacation a couple of years ago, I applied for a sales job at Veeko and started work at the Tiong Bahru outlet.

The pay is $1100 a month for junior staff. 6 day week, off on weekday(not-fixed), must work public holidays and working hours is 11am to 9pm. That works out to 4.231 an hour. 4.91 if you factor in the CPF contribution.

On day 1, I was introduced to a personal target, shop target, and watever targets people sitting in lalaland devised. The personal targets are anti-competitive as the structure is designed in such a way that staff fight like cats among themselves. Hence, every customer that comes in becomes part of a stalking game, giving rise to the 'follow very closely behind' routine. Stupid me had my first day's sales attributed to 'newcomer's luck' stolen by an unscrupulous '2nd shop in-charge' who happily keyed in her ID for my sales.

In addition to being on your feet all day, meeting nasty customers, the foul-mouthed, changing room divas, and faking interest type... And holding on to your customers so that your hard-earned sales won't be stolen, the company has cleverly decided to make sales staff bear the cost of stolen goods. So 50% of the COST, as in PRICE TAG "COST" minus staff purchase 'discount' will be borne by watever is deductible from employee's commission. Working hours are extended if there are customers who mill around past closing time and are too insensitive to walk out. Extra hours clocked are not paid but rolled over as hours to be claimed. But its hard to claim them. A perm staff told me that she can only claim it when she quits.

I lasted a mere 2.5 wks, out of the 5 wks i was 'commited' to work and threw in the towel.

Another example is the humble taxi. Everyone takes cabs sometime or another, and we have all had our fair share of good and ugly drivers. However, the service with a smile, polite and chirpy thing may be simply too far-fetched.

10 years ago, cab drivers were able to feed their families quite comfortably on their income. There were fewer cabs on the road and the rent was lower. Drivers could opt to own their cabs. Nowadays, drivers are reduced to just another unvalued employee of the cab companies. There are many more players now and the number of cabs on the road has multiplied. Drivers are squeezed by rising diesel prices, daily rent and the various other costs taxi companies add on. Many drivers quit each month as they can't make enough to justify the long hours spent on the road. This starts a vicious cycle. As the turnover increases, you get increasing number of drivers who are unfamiliar with the routes. Struggling to pay the rent and other expenses makes drivers turn to unorthodox mtds such as waiting for calls, taking indirect routes and worse, dangerous driving such as speeding to pick up more passengers during their shift or cutting across lanes to pick up a customer.

Do taxi companies care? It would be idealistic to think that they truly care about drivers' welfare. As long as the maximum number of cabs are rented, they can collect rent. And that's the important thing. To keep the ratio of idle vehicles low!

SO to improve service, PAY is of utmost importance. If the salesger is paid more, she'll be a happier person, be able to buy more shoes and hopefully genuinely smile more. How many smiles can you buy with $4.5 an hour? How many can you buy with $7?