Out of the box Make it easy for customers to give feedback
Most organizations in Singapore adopt a crazy way for customers to give feedback. 

They make it very difficult. They discourage online feedback and ask many unnecessary and troublesome questions. And they follow up with an automatic acknowledgement stating that the customer will get a reply within several days. 

In most cases, the customer was not able to give detail of the problem. So, the delayed reply would be useless. 

If the customer insist on talking to a human agent, it is usually quite difficult. The customer has to go through a painful screening process, press many buttons and provide customer identification numbers mainly for statistical recording. After that, the customer has to wait a long time for the call to be picked up. Often, the call is not picked up.

What is a better process?

Give a simple online form asking for the customer name, email address, telephone number and a description of the problem or request. That's all.

A staff can call back the customer to ask for more information, if necessary, or give an email reply with a link to point to the answer that is available online. 

If the customer is not able to handle the online form, the customer can call a certain number that is answered directly by a human agent. There is no need to divert the call to different agents according to the type of inquiry. The role of the agent is to collect the customer name, email address, telephone and a description of the problem. That's all. 

If it is an urgent issue that need an immediate response, such as service breakdown, the responding staff can contact the customer immediately, or tell the customer the expected time of the call.

My method allows the customer to get the feedback recorded immediately. He is usually willing to wait for a reply in due course. If it is an urgent issue, he will get attention at an earlier time, subject to scheduling. The customer does not have to wait a few days just to get the feedback recorded. 

Example of Oppo Singapore
One organization that has an excellent process, similar to what I described, is Oppo Singapore. They sell mobile phones.

I have contacted them a few times to get assistance. I can find an online form from their website easily. I only need to enter my name, email address, telephone and a description of the problem. I get a reply within a few hours or the next day, usually by email. The reply usually address the issue. 

Sometimes, I have to correspond a few times by email. The reply is handled promptly. The issue is usually resolved within a day or two.

I suspect that the time taken by Oppo to handle the issue is a fraction of the time taken by most other organizations.

Most organizations in Singapore are terrible in getting customer feedback. I hope that they will consider my suggestion to improve their customer service. 



Tan Kin Lian

Vote - do you agree that the processes used by organizations are quite bad?
 

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