Service in Singapore

I found this interesting article about the poor level of service in Singapore. Hmmm... my Marketing (I'm taking an intro to Marketing module at school this semester) tutor was talking about the same thing this week. Her opinion was that most people in service industries in Singapore don't really care about customer service because they don't really have to. Their jobs aren't on the line. I think that's an interesting point. I mean, if your customers are buying stuff from you no matter how rude you are, why bother to be polite? My tutor, who's originally from Hong Kong but has now settled down here, told us that service in Hong Kong industry has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years because the economy was so terrible a few years ago that businesses were compelled to improve their level of service to woo back customers. So does that mean Singapore needs a similar retail crisis for an improvement in service to happen? Well, I don't think so. For one thing, the governments a lot more hands-on here than there. According to my tutor, the Singapore government has already sent some people over to Hong Kong to take a look at how things are being done there now and how they managed to improve their level of customer service.

To be fair, service in Singapore isn't all that bad. You can find stores where the staff are friendly and don't act as if they'd rather you left their store, real fast. But then again, there are some stores where the staff look at you as if they hate you, just for existing. But its up to us consumers to lay our feet down and say No to Bad Service. Why bother buying stuff from a store where the people who are supposed to serve you act like you just murdered their grandfather? I don't. Last year, I bought my PC from a different store at Sim Lim than the one I was originally going to buy it from. I paid about $50 more. But I just couldn't stand the service at the first shop so I let my money do the talking and gave them the cold shoulder. See, if we consumers let shops with bad service know what they're doing wrong by depriving them of sales, then they'll be forced to think long and hard about what they're doing wrong and CHANGE.