Thursday, August 24, 2006

customer service - the Singapore style

My phone has been a little cranky these days. Walked into the showroom for the Nokia N-series phone at Scotts Shopping Centre. The showroom was really classy and posh with everything silverish grey, from the glass display cabinets with chrome finish to their cute service staff adorning in crisp grey shirt.

I'm a sucker for good customer service. It feels good when I was promptly being attended by one of the service staff. I really don't mind yakking a bit more, especially when the service staff is quite handsome and cute-looking. That being said, the following conversation will make any of you intelligent geeks flip.

***

Cute Service Staff: Hi! How can I help you?
Me: Oh, erm... I'm looking for a pink phone actually. And I'm rather interested in N80. Does it come in pink?
Cute Service Staff: That phone only comes in black. We have another model in pink. Just give me a minute. (proceeds to get the pink phone from the showcase to show it to me.)
Me: Oh this is rather nice. Tell me, what is the difference between the Nseries and the normal series of Nokia phone?
Cute Service Staff: Oh, the Nseries model number comes in 2 digits like N73, N80. The normal series of Nokia phones have 4-digit model numbers, like 6111, etc.
Me: -_- ............... (Speechless.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think in these cases we can help ourselves better than the salespeople can. Either they are not getting training or they are not learning about the product on their own, probably cos they are not interested and maybe that's cos they are not getting paid enough to be interested or they did not want to be in this job, wasn't keen on it in the first place...etc...there's no enthusiasm.

Anonymous said...

that's ridiculous. the fella is freaking lucky i'm not the customer coz i would tell him that's pretty obvious as long as you're literate. geez. -hl

JerL said...

BAM:These people are simply paper-smart but not street-smart.

HL:Gee... I just rolled my eyes. Speechless.