Tuesday, November 30, 2010
CUSTOMER service in Brunei is lacking, indicating a need for a national suvey that would look at how to improve the system, according to a consultancy group, which cited the results of an initial and "indicative" poll on the Sultanate's customer service.
BerSaMa Jaya Education and Management Sdn Bhd (BEaM) hopes to get government backing, particularly from the Ministry of Industry and Primary Resources (MIPR) and the Brunei Tourism Board, in undertaking a national survey to improve the level of customer service in the country.
"I would like to undertake a fully constructed Brunei Customer Service Index survey, along the lines of the Singapore and Malaysia surveys (that have already been conducted). This would form the comprehensive baseline of the true state of service and business excellence in Brunei (and) this information will then form the basis of action plans to move things forward," said Mark Grieves, BEaM Services principal.
He said the survey would ideally be "owned" by the government, and that Brunei Tourism would seem the most appropriate owner as such, if not one of the stakeholders involved.
He said the indicative survey meant to give an indication of the type of questions to ask in a more scientific and demographically fair survey.
The survey polled 60 random people, 17 expatriates and 45 Bruneians, said Grieves. He said he also tried to obtain a 50-50 split in the male and female respondents for fairness of response.
"It's more of a dipstick, I think; testing the waters and to give an indication of the direction in which one needs to go. In the jargon you say, it's directionally indicative, statistically, totally 100 per cent, the truth."
The initial survey showed interesting results and destroyed some common preconceptions of Bruneians' priorities in respect to customer service.
Questions on the indicative sample survey included prioritising of customer service elements, which saw sample respondents identifying personalised service, price and value for money, and reliability and consistency as their top three priorities in customer service.
While these results are not incredibly shocking, said Grieves, it is notable that "the perception is that price is what is most important to Bruneians. It is not. It is one of the most important things but it is not the most important thing."
Results also indicated that according to Bruneians, their customer service needs or priorities are only met "some of the time", while responses on whether it was expected of the government or public sector to be better than the private sector (in terms of service levels) indicated that approximately three-quarters expected it to be the same level of service excellence between the two sectors. Respondents were also asked on whether they found local service providers "going the extra mile".
He said personally that "there is a woeful lack of education on customer service. There is no service culture in Brunei (but) that's not to say, they aren't well-trained in the functional side of customer service".
In fact, he said, positive comments pulled off travel sites such as Tripadvisor.com, emphasised the friendliness and generosity of locals.
He also noted that there is a lack of major investment in service training, "even the basic of 'Greet, Smile, Thank' functional level of customer service is regarded as a cost here, it's not regarded as an investment".
Results thus also indicate not only foreign respondents, but also Bruneians, are not feeling well-served by their service providers here with the majority of respondents (almost 50 per cent) stating that only 'some of the time' do they experience customer service that goes the extra mile.
Grieves said the results have "formed the basis of several discussions I'm having with the folks at Brunei Tourism and Ministry of Education and the Technical Education Department, with a view to sort of creating vocational training programmes in customer service."
Most overseas counterparts actually have vocational training programmes geared towards teaching customer service, he added. "This is the point of what (Beam) is trying to do. If you look at our surrounding countries all of our neighbours, even Cambodia, even Laos, relatively significantly poor countries are investing in the service industry for three reasons. The first one is, irrespective of whatever industrial sector you are in these days, service is fundamental, particularly if we're talking about the tourism sector getting foreign investment, foreign folks, that kind of thing. The service industry is crucial, however you want to define that.
"Secondly, (and) most importantly, the service industry is a very, very good employer of people (and) is essentially people focused." Within the service industry, young people essentially work at the front line, which Grieves observed as "creating an industry that is underpinned by service that is very, very good. That's what places like Cambodia, Vietnam and what have you, are doing because they've got a lot of youth that they need to employ. They've also got a lot of tourists there and they're competing with each other."
Asked if he saw this happening in Brunei, Grieves said, "No, we don't see that here. Singapore is undoubtedly the leader in this. So Singapore has invested hugely in repositioning itself from a production tiger of the 1990's and 2000's, to a service-based economy and since 2007, has been using a thing called the Customer Service Index, which is a national survey done across the whole of the economy, to each sector everything from the kopitiam to Alexander Hospital and all of the universities. (This) is to see what their measure of service is."
They use the American version of the American Customer Service Index which has been used for about 20 years, he added, so it's a macroeconomic indicator.
Malaysia, he added, is pursuing something similar albeit not as rigorous, with its "Malaysia, Truly Asia" campaign, as are Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia.
"The whole of this part of the world is investing massively in the service industry and my view is that there is an opportunity to do that here in Brunei, but we're not at the moment."
Comparisons collated by Grieves of the major hotels advertised online on popular travel sites such as Tripadvisor.com and Wego.com, show that the level of customer satisfaction drops off very quickly when comparing from highest ranking to lowest (in hotel star rating).
"More importantly, the level of recommendation drops off very quickly as well and even The Empire Hotel & Country Club is not immune from criticism.'
That's why, he said, the indicative survey was created with positive questions.
As criticism is a very emotional response and is very subjective, said Grieves, people will question how many people had actually said such critical comments. "At this stage, because the sample was not constructed in that way, it was a purely random sample, I pitched the questions in such as way that it had a positive sense. That, in a way, is a construct of the methodology.
"I wanted to get a feel for what's going on in Brunei simply because, there are a lot of pre-conceived notions about Brunei," he said.
The next stage would be mounting a more scientific survey he added, noting that "again, the whole essence of people-based research is you need to know what question you are asking. If you're just doing a census, asking everybody about everything, that's fine but then you just get overwhelmed with data.
"You've got to really focus on whether you're going to focus on a deep dive into the construct of what people think of customer service in Brunei vis-a-vis their expectations of customer service.
courtesy of----" The Brunei Times
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