RadX of My SpaceLess shares his customer experience with UnionBank.

Unionbank Toll-Free Fridays

I recently activated my Paypal (Philippines) account using Unionbank’s EON debit card. I applied for it online, and was able to get my card in about two weeks. It takes time to activate after that, though.

That’s when I needed to call their domestic toll-free number. This is the hard part, since their customer line is usually busy. They have a voice message that keeps playing over and over, telling you that all their CSRs (customer service representatives) are busy at the moment. But I’ve discovered a good timing: Friday evenings. I actually did this twice. The first time was when I activated my Paypal and I needed to type in the Paypal code from Unionbank, having to ask for the code over the phone. The second time was when I asked if my Unionbank EON account can be added as a bank account in Paypal (it can, since it has a dual nature — debit card and savings account).

It seems that on Friday nights, people are excited to get off from work and are not really interested in calling toll-free numbers during their rush hours. So it takes a little while for a CSR to answer your inquiry, but it’s worth the wait.

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In the face of my recent customer service experiences, I thought to myself, there has to be a way to end this blah customer service.

Like in the past couple of weeks, I had one out of four good customer service experience. I got the good service from the Swatch store at Glorietta. I went in to look for a replacement strap of my Swatch watch. They didn’t have stocks for the strap that fit my watch, but their Swatch Store at Mall of Asia (MOA) does. The saleslady told me. I told her that it would be too much hassle for me to get to MOA. Besides, I’m not very fond of going there.

And the saleslady got the perfect solution for me. They could get the strap from their MOA store and they would replace my strap for me. But that would take two days, at most Ma’am, she said. Even if would take a week, I think I wouldn’t still mind. She just gave me the best service there is.

So how do you motivate your customer service team to perform like that?

CSM suggests the following:

1. Provide Ongoing Learning - It’s important that you not only provide training on organizational policies and technology, but also how to handle customers. Create an ongoing system for training and feedback.
2. Adjust the Attitude - Work with your customer service team members to create a positive attitude. Your negative attitude as a team leader will be picked up by your team who will in turn treat customers crabbily.
3. Give Incentives - Reward your customer service team for a job well done. It also helps if you ask them how they want to be rewarded. It elicits fairness and transparency.
4. Show Appreciation - Remember that your customer service team face a challenging day every day. Keep them motivated by sharing your appreciation in a timely, sincere, fair, and encouraging way.
5. Support Outstanding Customer Service - You can show support in many ways: technology support, cheerleading, keeping standards and morale high.

Read more…

If you’re following this blog, I’m sure you’ve read about my customer service experience with Cebu Pacific. In that post, I told them not to stint on their customer service. I emailed my blogpost to Mr. Boo Chanco, a popular opinion writer of Philippine Star.

In seconds, Mr. Chanco emailed back and said that he would forward my link to Cebu Pacific, and the latter will get in touch with me directly.

True enough, two days after, I got an email from their Guest Service Manager, Mr. Noel Bulanan. Here’s the email-reply:

Dear Ms. Ybanez-Delid,

Greeting from Cebu Pacific!

This is in response to the post you made in your blog coursed through Mr. Chanco dated 06 May 2008. Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused when you visited one of our ticketing offices.

We appreciate your feedback on our services and we looked into the items you’ve raised. The air conditioners are working and we are looking at adding another unit to cope with the growing requirement at the ticket office. We are also in the process of manning more counters to speed up the queue processing. Lastly while the itinerary issued serves as an official receipt, we’ve reminded our Cashiers that should the guest ask for an O.R., we shall issue this to the guest.

We value your comments. Please be assured that we will continue to institute changes when necessary and improve on the service we provide to every guest in every point of contact with them.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Noel S. Bulanan
Manager, Guest Service

I appreciate this reply. I am grateful to Mr. Chanco, too. I’m sure my invoking Mr. Chanco’s help has a lot to do with CebuPac’s immediate response to my concern.

But somehow, I can’t have the printed itinerary (ticket) serving as official receipt. I’ll have to check again that itinerary and see if it has all the elements of an official receipt such as VAT Registration Tin Number or a TIN number or a BIR Permit Number.

keyetv.com features Williamson County, Texas, and how its government is improving its customer service. For some extra incentive Williamson County employees are encouraged to treat people well. Their pay bonuses now depends on it.

I’ve written quite a number of posts on what’s the customer service like in governments, and I know that many people don’t really expect a good service from government. A good service from government has always been treated as a surprise, or worse a joke. Its reputation precedes it.

But I see no reason why governments shouldn’t be run like private companies. Citizens are customers, too.

Going back to Williamson County, their employees will be evaluated by the residents too, and bonuses will be paid out according to how they perform. Right now the employees are in training and by 2009, they’ll start receiving bonuses accordingly.

I wish my government would have this kind of program, too. (._.)

I’d definitely like to have these:

1. Setting, publishing and applying explicit standards for service delivery to customers/ citizens;
2. Providing full, accurate and easily accessible information in plain language on the services of the agency, what they cost, how to access them, and who is in charge;
3. Regular and systematic consultation with users and offering choices for use where possible;
4. Delivering services with courtesy and helpfulness, equally available to all who are entitled to them and delivered to suit users’ convenience, as far as possible;
5. Agencies are to operate a clear and simple complaints procedure and offer a swift and effective remedy if obligations to users are not met; and
6. Providing value for money, to both clients and the Government, through efficient and economical delivery of services within the affordable resources.

Adopted from Run government like a business.

That’s what Gwyne Young, Managing Editor of CustomerThink, advises companies out there. Gwyne points out the reasons for companies to stint on customer service: economic slowdown and so companies cut down on operating cost, streamline employees thus more work but fewer people to do it. As a result, the employees feel like being held with a tight spring.

But this shouldn’t be the case, she says. During an economic slowdown, there’s more reason for companies to spend a little money to institute systems that will attract and keep loyal customers.

I want to say this to Cebu Pacific too: please don’t stint on your customer service.

Last Sunday we went to CebuPac’s office on Domestic Road. They have two offices on that street, but knowing that the smaller one, which is nearer to the old domestic airport would be more crowded, we decided to get our reservation from the bigger office a few feet away.

First, parking in front of the building was cramped and difficult. Well, there’s a bigger parking lot for everybody on the other side of the road. So customers have an option, which should be the case.

Second, the office was narrow and not well-lighted. Worse, there was no airconditioning at all! While waiting for our turn, I surveyed the room and saw three ACs mounted on the wall-ceiling, but I doubted if they were working. Only a single fan was made to cool the room and the bored, sleepy, tired (maybe of waiting) customers.

Was the airconditioning turned off because it was a Sunday? If that was the case then they might as well not do business on Sundays.

Third, the line was super slow, and I observed it was not because each customer had many transactions but because of the system.

Last, they don’t consciously issue official receipts! When it was our turn to pay and get our tickets, we were only given the tickets. My husband asked for a receipt and the cashier just mumbled something like, “that’s your receipt.” Puzzled, my husband turned to me to ask if the official receipt is also the printed ticket. I looked at the printed ticket, and said, “No, it’s a ticket. This is not an OR.”

My husband went back to the cashier and demanded for a receipt. That was the time that the cashier gave in and made out an official receipt for us. See, they have ORs, but they are given upon request!

Looking back, I think many of their customers are not given official receipts at all! How convenient!

I think it was only a couple of weeks ago that I read about CebuPac’s COO’s vision for the company, and who claimed they’ve been living it. I was impressed. But now, frankly, I’m quite disappointed.

I’m writing this because I want to help them improve their customer service, and not for anything else. Please!

Related stories:
I Lost Money because of Cebu Pacific
Consumer Watch: Customer Service at Airports
Consumer Watch: Cebu Pacific Air

Mark Malkoff, comedian and writer, one day thought of an insane yet legit idea, that is to visit the 171 Starbucks in Manhattan in 24 hours!

I learned about this when Diane, a friend-blogger, featured Mark’s video while doing the activity. Mark tried but his caffeine-dehydrated body just gave up plus he ran out of time.

I went through his account of the experience, hoping to read about Starbucks’s customer service, but Mark didn’t touch on that. It was only in the last part of his account that he mentioned that Starbucks had been very kind to him. But this was after the fact that he tried to break some record and give Starbucks free promotion.

He did mention about what he learned: One thing I learned out of it is that all the Starbucks are essentially the same. The only thing that differed was the clientele’s personality, depending on which part of the city I would go to.

I would have wanted to comment on:

1. How was the service in each outlet go?
2. Which outlet was more customer-friendly (at least to him because he didn’t have time to stay a bit and observe)?
3. How did the Starbucks barista treat him, obviously a harried or a rushing customer?

In Mark’s itinerary, though, we can surmise what the customer service is like at the Starbucks he was able to visit.

Check out the video and Mark’s account!

It was an interesting activity. It gives me an idea: how about me visiting all the Starbucks in Makati’s central business district?

Hmmm… I’ll keep you posted!

Here’s the YouTube video:

InsideRetailing reports:

Online shoppers drop their baskets over poor service, survey finds.

About half of Australian and New Zealand online shoppers will abandon online retail sales provider with poor customer service, a survey commissioned by RightNow Technologies has found.

“Today, the success of every business depends on good customer experiences,” said Brett Waters, Vice President Asia Pacific South, RightNow. “Consumers are much more attuned to what is, and what isn’t, acceptable behaviour when they interact with organisations and are increasingly prepared to remove their business because of poor experiences. Companies need to wise-up to the correlation between poor customer experiences and churn – if you can’t make it easy and satisfying for people to do business with you, you’ll lose them to someone who does – and quickly.”

Read more…

Yeah, it’s about time that we refuse, reject poor service. With so many choices out there that are equally good, I see no reason for us to stick with a company with poor service.

BNET-Healthcare Industry carries the story of WSJ about the many large hospitals demanding up-front payment otherwise patients are turned away. BNET’s story then presents a scenario why hospitals are gouging their patients.

Simply put, hospitals do it for profit even if they claim to be among the nonprofit organizations.

I thought this cash-up-front-or-else situation can happen only in the developing countries like the Philippines. The articles on BNET and WSJ told me otherwise.

Just last week, I caught on the news the story of a grandmother killed by a speeding vehicle. The rescuers brought the grandmother to three hospitals before they were “admitted.” But it was too late. The old lady didn’t survive the speeding vehicle, much less the trips from one hospital to another.

There are all sorts of horror stories in hospitals, and all these point to customer service. It shows us what kind of customer service we expect to get from hospitals. True and sad. But it shouldn’t be the case.

I believe that a hospital should be a place where patients and hospital customers go to to be appeased and reassured that everything’s going to be all right and ill people will feel a lot better. These patients need not be cured right away, but be treated well and rightly.

The latest buzz in the healthcare industry here is the cheaper medicines bill that is finally signed into law. The bill won’t lower all prices of medicines right away, but it will open the avenues to eventually bring down medicine prices.

A long shot? I know but with the present service we’re getting from hospitals and pharmacies, anything that gives us hope that things are going to be better is always welcome.

Let’s give this bill a chance, even if people behind it is using it as a subtle advance election campaign. Let’s give Philippine healthcare industry a chance.

Let’s all strive to make customer service in hospitals good, better, best!

Photo from Stock.Xchng

I wish this were the headlline of a local newspaper. But no such luck is coming my way, I guess. The lucky ones are those bus passengers in Ulster, Ireland.

PersonnelToday.com reports that Ulster bus drivers will receive customer service training. The training will cover Ulster bus drivers’ attitudes from simply being bus drivers to pro-actively providing passengers with information, care and assistance. The training will include local actors who will be acting out different passengers-customers and it will wind up with mentoring and coaching. Read more…

I would mark that day when I read a similar headline in the local news. Here, not only bus drivers but many, if not most, drivers need some training in customer service. Better yet, let’s start with a basic driving training.