Sales, Social and Tech

(Update: BBO has replied saying that the decision to fire Lyn was because Lyn violated company policy of discussing clients on social networks and not influenced by SingTel. Read press release here .) A Facebook post is now being spread of how an agency staff complains about Singtel bad reception has lead to the sacking of one agency staff. Wrote Lyn Ng , I lost my job, thanks to SingTel. My friends will know that I have been making a lot of complaints on the SingTel Facebook page the past year. Over time, I have actually reduced my posts because I realised how futile it is. Yet, on one very busy work day, I received a call from my boss. She asked if I had posted on SingTel’s Facebook page before, and I said yes. Then she went on to say that I have listed the agency as my workplace and it is shown on my profile. I was surprised, because I don’t even recall updating my profile work location. I don’t bring work into Facebook, so that caught me off guard. Turns out she was r...

Singtel chose to piss off the wrong public relations executive and it resulted in IT journalists and public relations community rallying behind her against Singtel. Bridget Kow, Account Executive at The Hoffman Agency, wrote on Singtel Facebook Wall about being wrongly charged on mobile data downloaded when she was overseas. Bridget thought that her loyalty to Singtel would mean something and Singtel would consider defraying this cost. However, her loyalty meant nothing to the telco. Wrote Bridget . "My bill for this month was SGD$340 dollars from the usual SGD$65 I regularly pay. After over ten years of loyalty, regular bill payments and good service, I was stunned to discover today that your organisation had taken the liberty of charging me an additional SGD$200 for 10MB of data while I was out of country. How is it considered “goodwill” when I still have to pay 1 day Dataroam package at $15/day instead of $200 dollars for 10 mb.... ..Instead of punishing a loyal custo...

Yesterday, I blogged about how a usually cool headed entrepreneur went into a rage rant over Singtel customer service or rather the lack of it. This morning, I saw the newsfeed flooding from Milton Sau, a news producer at Channel NewsAsia,  about his experience with Singtel. His first issue with Singtel was whether Singtel should have charged him to to replace his landline cable that’s outside his home.  So far, it seems he has not got another verification from Singtel. And Singtel tried to call him. Wrote Milton, "Singtel customer service called and said can’t hear me over the phone. And I’m a Singtel subscriber." In trying to get a simple information from Singtel Customer, he got " verbal diarrhoea-ed over the phone". As summarised by Milton, "First I was told my broadband connection wasn't disconnected. Now I'm unable to log onto the web at home. The only consistency with Singtel is its bill reminders." A friend has recommende...

21122012 may not be the end of the world yet, but it was a day when the usually cool headed Bernard Leong, founder of sgentrepreneur.com , launched into a rant rage over the customer's service he experienced from Singtel. Wrote Bernard on his tumbler , 1. I have purchased an iPhone 5 at Takashimaya and specifically told the customer rep that I have a multi-SIM. That moron gave me a single SIM and I have to wait for 2 days to get my phone activated. Worse, I have to travel to Takashimaya and get a bad customer rep asking me to wait when the customer service department called and assured me that I do not need to wait. 2. I have purchased a new fibre broadband for my new home and told them that I have an existing broadband in my parents' home. Those idiots, without verifying with me went and cancel the broadband in my parents' home. I have told them that I have two broadband connections and they don't seem to get it. In the end, I have wasted 2 hours to go through th...

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 c...

Singtel is trying its best to salvage its brand since a user complaint went viral on Facebook. The telco has since introduced a Facebook app to allow Singtel users to report outages in their network. Yet Singtel users are still complaining about the telco's bad 3G coverage. Why are Singtel users seeing red? The biggest contributor would be its false reasoning in explaining why they need to reduce the 3G data cap. When Singtel announced that it was reducing the 3G data cap, it said in their Facebook Post , " The tiered price plans allow a more balanced and fair data distribution, ensuring that everyone enjoys a faster and better mobile experience". Yet, in its recent post to cool hot tempers, Singtel now says "We are adding more than 100 new base station sites islandwide before the end of this year to boost capacity and further enhance coverage." This doesn't make sense. If the reduced data cap was meant to ensure  everyone enjoys a faster a...

A Singtel user, frustrated with the telco's slow mobile data network, shared his disappointment on Singtel's Facebook Page which saw close to 10,000+ likes and 800+ comments in less than 24 hours. Wrote John Lee on Singtel Facebook Page, "Dear singtel all my friends are complaining about your network. How could you setup a 4G network where your 3G suck big time and you want to lower our data plan but still charge us the same price and yet we still get many drop call and slow network. You guys are taking our money but not giving us the service so here I'm complaining right at your face and wait for your feedback.. ." Singtel Facebook administrators have been trying to cool the angry Facebook mob, but to no avail. Wrote one of Singtel Facebook administrators, "We hear you. We would like to assure you that SingTel is committed to providing high-quality and consistent 3G and 4G mobile coverage to its customers. There are various factors that affect co...

After an incident where a community manager for Singtel Facebook Page was verbally abused, Singtel has announced its Facebook House Rules to maintain order on the Page. Wrote Singtel As a host of this page, SingTel takes pride in keeping the conversations fair and decent for all. We have engaged a team of trained, empowered, and dedicated Customer Care service officers to provide assistance in queries on the Facebook page, working alongside our Community Managers.   Your comments are strongly encouraged and welcomed; be it positive or negative, and will not be deleted as long as the content does not breach the following points: Abusive, defamatory or obscene Violates copyright or intellectual property Condones or promotes illegal activity Fraudulent, deceptive or misleading Off-topic Sexual or offensive graphically or in tone Personal attacks, vulgarity, racism, or hateful in language targeting religion, gender, nationality, or political beliefs Deliberate disrupti...

Users of Singtel broadband starting to notice pop-up appearing on every browser they used. Singtel's official line is that it is currently investigating the issue and many thinking it is a virus attack, a forumer at Hardwarezone may have found the reason for the pop-up. Wrote ttschn at hardwarezone , "it looks like it was caused by a misconfigured nginx transparent proxy. it was redirecting URLs like /x.gif to staging.examiner.com/x.gif. so some sites with tracking images like g.gif?id=XX&crypt=YYZZ got redirected. and then it just so happened that staging.examiner.com was asking for http auth." If this is so, then the pop-up seem to be more human error than virus attack.