Skip to main content

What Singtel can learn from Seth Godin's blog post on customer service

Seth Godin recently post his definition of customer service. This is something where Singtel can learn as it looks to tackle the viral complaint about its 3G services.

Wrote Seth Godin

"The only purpose of 'customer service'...

is to change feelings. Not the facts, but the way your customer feels. The facts might be the price, or a return, or how long someone had to wait for service. Sometimes changing the facts is a shortcut to changing feelings, but not always, and changing the facts alone is not always sufficient anyway.

The customer who seeks out your help isn't often looking to deplete your bank account. He is usually seeking validation, support and a path to feeling the way he felt before you let him down."

Seth has hit it on the spot about customer service.

When the complaint about Singtel 3G coverage went viral, Singtel went the traditional method of addressing the complaint with facts.

This of course didn't work. The customer does not care if Singtel is investing $3billion or installing another 100 base stations in Singapore. 

All the customer wanted was to be assured that his decision to choose Singtel over Starhub or M1 was the right 2-year commitment he ever made.

This lesson in customer service isn't just for Singtel, but for all those who want to live up to its commitment to "good customer" service.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Will mrbrown's post on Mr Tan Kin Lian's thermometer app "misadventure" promote technology ageism?

I am not ashamed to say I support Mr Tan Kin Lian as a presidential candidate because I believed in what he stood for. And when Mr Tan posted his "misadventure" with a thermometer app, I did shake my head in disbelief that he did that. Source:   http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2013/07/we-could-have-had-him-for-president.html Thinking twice, there could be a possibility that Mr Tan misunderstood how this app work. Most  thermometer app take data from various weather stations to display the temperature on it. Yes, the technology savvy will do a #facepalm when they read the post and mrbrown's post demonstrated it perfectly. Wrote mrbrown , "Maybe the former Presidential-hopeful didn't realize he needed to upgrade to the Pro version of the app. Then his iPhone would not only measure temperature, it would also measure current PSI (PM2.5 included), tell you if you are having your period, and cook instant noodles. Good thing he didn't try to measure boil

How UOB's Paper Trail Amplifies IT Greatest Security Threat

UOB required you to do everything on paper. If you want to change your mobile number for your banking account with them or for your credit card, you need to fill up a form. Yet, this paper trail represented a potential security fail for the bank - Human Error. So a bitcoin expert walked into UOB to open a bank account. The bank employee had to print a form from a online pdf document to fill in this bitcoin expert's particulars. When it came to entering the bitcoin expert's email, that's when the forgotten art of handwriting was the most obvious of the digital generation. Wrote Robert Capodieci, My name is Roberto Capodieci, as most of you know. and my email address is very obvious to decode. It is not a p4l_l337_s0u1@gmail.com, but it is a more obvious roberto@capodieci.com, thing that, right after reading my name in the same form, should come out easy. Still, a data entry personnel of the UOB bank (or of a service provider the UOB bank uses) entered it as roberto

NEL Train Fault Shouts Lack Of Crisis Communication

The North-East Line train fault of 11 April 2018 was my virgin experience of a rush hour train fault since I moved to Punggol. One would have thought that with the number of train faults experienced by the North-East Line operator, SBS Transit, they would have improved the communications and handling of train faults. However, my personal experience told another story. First, there were no announcements at the Punggol LRT stations of the train fault even though SBS Transit manages them. The train fault was reported as early as 7.10am as I had a friend who was also stuck in the train. I boarded the LRT at Coral Edge around 7.30am and I didn't hear of any announcement nor was there any signage to inform me o the train fault at Punggol Station. Second, the announcement kept saying that there would be a 15 minutes delay, but 15 minutes passed and the trains, on both side, wasn't moving. If the announcement would be more frank to say it will be a longer delay, commuters would