Walk the Talk

I wouldn't name any names, but anyone with a Google map or knowledge of Kuala Lumpur would know which place I'm talking about. I'm talking about a very big telco provider, which has a service centre in Taman Tun Dr Ismail. The centre seems to be staffed by nimrods.

I went in just before the lunch hour to pay my broadband bill -- to say nothing of the thoroughly unimpressive Internet service this provider offers -- and there was already a queue.

There were a few people working the iPhone counters and the mobile broadband areas. I asked one of them where to pay in person, and I was directed to the automatic pay machines instead. I declined as I wanted to ask the staff (a poor mistake, that) about the quality of service I was receiving.

So I opted to queue to pay at the counter; you know, where an actual human sits behind to take your money and hand you a printed receipt. I took my place at the back of the line. A girl tried to jump the queue. I snarled. She jumped back and took her proper spot.

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All is well and good, and fair's fair. Except now, there's an auntie at the front of the counter, who has no business paying any fees, who chooses to harangue the counter clerk about her SIM card. Come on, lady, you need to talk to Customer Service, not hold up the line, I was thinking. After about 20 minutes (and the line continues to grow, and the queue begins to push out through the doors), the thinking turned into hissing (by yours truly).

I'm quite sure that I wasn't the only one shooting her dirty looks. After she collected her SIM card, her answers, and her phone, she finally left. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief, only to revert to groans when two out of the three people at the counter stood up, put up the "Closed" sign and headed out. To make matters worse, the printer they had is out of order, so every transaction has to be sent to the main printer (on the other side of the room) and the poor guy has to get off his seat, walk over to the other end to retrieve it again and again.

The queue is now both long and filled with disgruntled people who have to apparently miss lunch to pay a crappy bill. Finally, someone who could be a supervisor walked up to the line and said: "Oh, it will take a while” like it was nothing.

One auntie behind me asked him, "Why are two out of your three payment counters empty?"

He said, "Because they are out for lunch!"

At this point, I turned towards him and asked: "Is this a smart thing to do, considering that the lunch hour is full of people who need to come here to see your team... and you are running on a skeleton crew?!"

About six or seven other people heard me (hell, I meant that to be heard), and looked at him in question too. He cringed a bit.  Okay, he cringed a lot.  But it's not our fault that they can't handle a peak business hour by making a dumb decision.

So my message to this telco provider is: You might talk about leading technology, and making the most out of human capital (heck, all companies say it) but you don't walk the talk.

Once, this blue chip company was one of the very best for customer service in the nation -- though through recent comments made from friends and from my own observation, this is no longer the case.

The worst part is, all of that could've been avoided if some supervisor practised a modicum of common sense. You can invest millions of dollars in technology and research and infrastructure, and all of that goes to pot, if the people just can't be bothered to use their brain to use it.