I don’t have many opportunities to test customer service in the private sector, but the experiences I’ve had have all been frustrating. The first was when my new laptop hard drive crashed. I didn’t know it was the hard drive – it looked more like BIOS and the support staff on the phone agreed with me – so I wanted to send it back in for repair. The local HP shop works with Singapore HP, but I didn’t buy it locally so I called Singapore direct. ‘Just give the main unit to the shop and have them send it to us through their channels. We don’t need power supplies or anything else’ I had a global repair contract, so I wasn’t expecting to have to pay for anything.
The local shop took the laptop along with the ticket number and my purchase receipt and promised to ship it immediately to Singapore. It would be back in two weeks, they said. Two weeks later I got a call to come to the shop. I expected to be picking it up, but when I got there, they said they needed the power supply. They hadn’t sent my laptop. They hadn’t even touched it.
I screamed at them that I needed it urgently and that if they weren’t going to do it, just let me know and I’d do it. They promised it would go immediately. Two weeks later, they called to say that if I wanted them to send it, I’d have to pay the shipping. I screamed at them again for not telling me that in the first place and they promised again to send it immediately. I took the laptop away and did it myself.
I’ve wanted to upgrade it since, but didn’t want to go back to that store. I’d lost my trust in them. But recently the lack of memory has become a problem. I couldn’t open a key powerpoint presentation because it was too large. With Marie going to Europe, I thought she could bring it back with her. The memory was available in the US for $70, but they wouldn’t ship to Europe. After a lot of searching, I found it in Europe for 80 Euro, but it was now a risk that it wouldn’t arrive in time for Marie, so I went back to the local shop.
‘We can get it for you in 10 days at 120 Euro,’ they told me. I decided that the extra cost was better than the small risk of it not arriving in time and the extra month I’d have to use the memory. I asked them to check the delivery time and assure me it was 10 days. They did.
Last Monday, 10 days later, I drop in to pick it up and they’re having a meeting about it. A MEETING about some memory. It seems that it wasn’t in stock and it hasn’t been shipped yet. They decide to try getting from Kolkata and after checking that it’s in stock (why didn’t they do that the first time) they say it will be here in another 5 days – I can pick it up on Sunday.
I went this morning, SURE that it would be here this time, but no. It hasn’t been sent because of rain. A whole week because of rain! It’s still raining, but they assure me it will be here on Thursday. I don’t believe them.
The problem comes from the relaxed nature of Bhutanese. It fits with the friendly, generous nature that makes up happiness. The whole country operates on a ‘it’ll be ready when it’s ready’ policy and until it arrives, there’s no point in worrying about it. Kind of a Buddhist ‘she’ll be right.’ But that’s not going to work in an international environment. My office mate is setting up the technology for a medical transcription service and the King’s sister is setting up the country’s first call centre. If these operate on the same principle, they’ll fail within the first month.
Perhaps they can employ more people for less hours so that the staff can stay happy even with the high stress environment. But I think what’s most needed is some ownership and an understanding of the importance of keeping promises. In both cases, the local HP shop could have made me a happy customer if they’d told me up front what I should expect. I could then have made decisions and set expectations based on accurate information.