Friday, June 1, 2012

Malaysia's Customer Services Needs Some Upgrading to Do!!

Yesterday,
on a sunny, not-too-hot-to-kill-you kinda warm day...
I took quite a troublesome journey to the Taiwan Cultural and Economic centre in Menara Yayasan Tun Razak, Jalan Bukit Bintang. This is because I have to do my visa for my upcoming internship in Taipei for 2 months starting July.
It was quite a long walk from the Bukit Bintang monorail though, tiring actually. haha...

Anyhow, sweaty and hot, my friend and I arrived at the office place.
And lo and behold, I was greeted by a lady in the counter with a sour face. As if she ate more plums than any of us does...
And as ALWAYS, being so insensitive to such early "warnings" emitted by this lady, I wasn't aware about what's the come next.

(Lady in red, and I'm in blue.)

“文件呢?都拍好了吗?” (where's your documents? are they well arranged?)
“好了”
“你没贴上照片,2张” (You have yet to paste your photos, 2 copies)

So I went to glue my photos on the documents, but I was kinda blur that time, plus she was giving vague instructions, I glued 2 photos of mine on the application form. Passed back to her...

“tsk, 小姐不是说贴在这里吗?!而且是贴一张而已!”
(tsk, miss, haven't I told you to paste it here?! And just one photo is enough!")

Guys, I'm not freaking kidding when I put the "!" mark here in the dialogue, cz she was literally raising her voice at me. Its the kind where you didnt do your house work when you're supposed to, then your mom would storm in your room and yell at your in an increasingly loud volume...as if someone is gradually turning up the volume in their throats...or lungs...or chest...whatever)

Truly I was shocked by her responds, cz that is really unprofessional. Yeah I know I did a mistake, quite an annoying mistake, but I'm the customer here and that is how you Taiwan ambassadors treat us? I feel that there is a rude attitude there. Clearly I was mistreated.

Blah!
Do you know what's the worse thing? I freaking didnt do anything to respond, but just stood there and go "oh ok...",
then couldn't-carelessly pluck out my ugly passport photos and stick on the counter table...

Silent protest I might call it...hehe.

And if you think this is only it, WELL WRONG!

I was be greeted by other unfortunately bad customer service events in Pavilion KL. The salesgirl in The Body Shop couldn't careless to look at me when she knew about my RM50 budget to get a gift for my friend. I find it rather discriminating. You might think I'm overreacting...but girls generally has the instinct to know when they are in the "kena stared down zone"...

Then in SASA, a salesgirl asked if I needed assistance. Though I did not intend to buy anything, I asked her to recommend a good liquid eyeliner so that I budget for one soon. She was tactical enough to show me around, then went straight to the point

*holding the liquid eyeliner, ready to send to counter*
"Anything else you wanna purchase,miss?"
"Owh, I would like to consider about it first."
" Is there ANYTHING else I can get for you?" *with the same starry-scary eyes again like Body Shop gal*
"Erm, can I look around first?"

The next minute, I could see her rolling her eyeballs while turning her back on me. It was still fine, I had met with so many such experience, where salesgirls treats us like their lil ignorant sisters who just wanna learn make up, as if we dont know anything. Ironically, I met quite alot of such examples in SASA. TROLOLOLOL....
Then I could hear her gossiping about another customer, aunty customer who was few rows behind me.
This scene got the whole out of me. It has been a very very very very bad culture for sales persons or anybody in any profession to react such a way to their clients/customers...not to mention infront of other customers....It's just plain rudeness.

Just like recently the PR fail incident of Paradigm Mall. (No i'm not trying to promote it..haha)
Even if the customer is annoying and disturbing, the management can't just screw people off like that (especially when the whole conversation is open for the public to witness)
Aiyooo...


save your time for something than bitching other bitches...*opps*
Not that I'm prejudice towards salesman/salesgirl or whoever related in such line, but I've gone through many unpleasant customer service such as this. I just hope I know how to respond well but then make my defence poisely without shrieking or ending up in a cat fight.

Is this the kind of culture in Malaysia? Where customers are intimidated by the salespersons and often they can't handle the rejection of the customers. Then they ended gossiping and bad-mouthing the people who dont wan't to buy their products/services. Clearly, Malaysia's customer services gotta UP their game more lorrrrrr.....

I've met with a consultant in London Body Management, who insulted my friend about us students being poor and undeserving of their services. Then when she met with another customer (rich aunty), she changed her egoistic attitude into an obedient puppy. Dramatic right? It was real life drama. *Oscar award for her please*

Having said that, sometimes I might fall into this category of people. Maybe not to customers but to friends and family. I'm glad THESE incidents acted as a good reminder for me. That is to NOT judge people or judge blatantly.

Quote from my friend, Malcolm, about judging:

We always say "do not judge a book by its cover", but everytime we look at a new facebook profile we'll automatically check out the photo section first. No photo, terus close tab.
Anyone check out the "about me" section? Or "favourite books"?


I am quite defenceless when it comes to such confrontational discrimination/judgement...sighs. All I usually do is write a song about it and sing those bitterness away. And not to mention, discuss with Mr. Gorian. Haha...he'll always enlighten me with funny comments and responds. Sometimes how I wish he'll be by my side when all these things happen. He'll probably blast the salesgirl's mind off with his consultant arguing skills. XD



What would Jesus do if he's there with me on the "crime" scene?
God please bless and extinguish their fiery hearts......



 and mine.