Singapore is fast changing and able to transform itself every five years. New art center, new casino, new entertainment hubs, new sport center…From swamps to First World in 40 years ++.

What will Singaporeans be like 50 years from now?

Expect radical changes, while at the same time a few things will never change….

Damien Duhamel
www.clearstate.com

Many companies plant innovation flags in front of their domain with the hope of appearing innovative. Others companies push this zeal even further and integrate “innovation” and “innovate” into their own name. Most companies decorate their marketing material with the same words.

With the exception of very few, these are usually the least innovative companies. Innovation is a competitive advantage few have been able to master. Those who understand the ropes of innovation usually don’t put “innovation” stickers on their
foreheads.

In a recent client case, Clearstate was engaged to support the Asia market entry of a global firm with great high quality and reliability telecom needs. Part of the engagement was to evaluate, and benchmark best Asia Pacific HQ location; and a key decision criterion was telecom infrastructure. This presented our consultants with an interesting case of some of the worse customer service a listed telecom company can offer.

Without going into too much detail, here is a list of sequential events that shows how poor firms can still be at customer servicing… Again, this happened with a listed telecom services provider in Singapore. A highly saturated and competitive industry…

• Tried and failed to identify Corporate Sales telephone number on company’s website
• Called main line to figure out Corporate Sales telephone number. Twice put on hold. Twice this goes nowhere
• Frustration and amusement builds up. Call again, and request for a name we can approach. We get a name but
  company strangely refuses to give a direct phone number
• We call next day. Ask for this person. He is out. We are asked to leave a voice mail. A message is left,
  requesting the person to call us back. No one calls back.
• Called again the next day. Corporate Sales person is still in meeting. Able to speak to Corporate Sales secretary.
  Request secretary to remind Corporate Sales person to call us back. We are being promised that this would happen within 24h
• No call received. We decide to pursue this quest simply out of curiosity (this telecom supplier being already
  written off from our supplier recommendations)
• We send a customer feedback message via the emailing tool provided on the telecom provider website
• We receive an auto answer message (see below), promising that someone would be contacting us with three working
  days. Obviously no one contacts us.

It is still hard to believe that such firms are able to survive with a turn-off customer service approach. If this is an outliner event in a well operated company then this will rectify by itself. If it is a true company pattern then it is often the “beginning of the end”; and only Dell-like drastic measures will save the company.

Two conclusions:

• Implementing innovation is costly but churns high rewards if well-executed. However, no innovation programs as fancy as they can be will counterweight the effects of poor customer service. In order words, the valued-added created by innovation gets flushed away by poor customer servicing processes. This can be very costly to any businesses.

• This listed telecom supplier has self-barred itself from a potential USD650K initial infrastructure investment and telecom services perpetuity running in the multi-million dollars.

Being poor at serving customer is indeed costly.

Damien Duhamel
www.clearstate.com

Please note Company name has been removed.

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