Impressive Service

Sleepy has encountered some bad customer service in the past & recently; from the insensitive & clock-wood cx svc staff of the insurance co (cant rem which one haha), the infamous Sony Ericsson incident, the tassle with Citibank; to the inexperienced waitresses @ Que Pasa, the overchatty waitress who interrupted our conversation @ Crystal Jade & the rude LTA hotline officer; some of which are perhaps what we expect, some of which are totally NOT expected from the esteemed organisations. Of course, the company will definitely try to do service recovery (which in the case of LTA they didnt. A guy called me to ask me how was the service & i told him it wasn't good but he never probe more!!! Then what's the point of calling me?) but somehow in some cases, the damage has already been done. 1 of the grouses of customer service staff is that whilst consumers are quick to write in with complaints (I'm 1 of the guilty!), they are very slow in giving compliments to the good service rendered. Over the past 2 months, I've been superbly impressed by the customer service by SQ after not one but 2 incidents with them. Tis was what happened:

Incident 1
Sleepy & Dar have actually booked a tour package to Bali, flying on SQ in late Aug/early Sep last year. However as Dar had to go for an emergency eye op, we had no choice but to cancel the tour. The tour agent, took forever to get back to us regarding our cancellation charges (like almost 6 months down the road!!!) and that was after numerous angry calls to them. The guy in charge actually had the nerve to tell me that he has overlooked our case coz he was celebrating his 30th Wedding Anniversary and was thus away. DUH!!! And despite that, they actually charged us almost $400 for a trip that we did NOT even go! True lah, it was our oversight in not buying travel insurance but still... haiz! So anyways as the travel agent claimed that some of the charges were from the airline, moi then wrote in to SQ to ask for a waiver of the charges. Not only was the gal prompt and efficient in answering my queries (which were a lot as I was trying to find out more details), she even took the liberty to help us to call the agent; but the agent refused to disclose anything. Throughout the emails, she was always very prompt and kept us updated on what she was doing throught... v impressed :)

Incident 2
For our recent trip to Melbourne, we flew on SQ as well as the flight timings were most suitable for Dar's bz schedule :P Have I mentioned that he bought a huge surfboard back from Aussieland? Yep he did & it was q funny when we took the trains (both in Aussie & S'pore) coz it was sooooo long & he was occupying a lot of space haha. Yeah so anyways, as he was bz for the next couple of days, he only opened the board bag to check on his surfboard couple of days later and he found that 1 of the sides of the sideboard has cracked!!! For this trip, having learnt a lesson from the above incident, we did buy travel insurance, so we thought to try to claim from the insurance agent as we did not open up the bag @ the airport so we were afraid that it might be more difficult to claim from the airline. However, the insurance agent told Dar that it might be easier to claim from SQ instead and thus Dar called the baggage claims or something department on late Fri evening (I kept asking Dar how come they r open so late haha!) & Dar said that they were very professional and all; they did not commit to anything, just asked Dar to fill up a form, fax it to them & that an officer will be calling him shortly. That was last Fri. Guess what? Yesterday, Dar received a letter from SQ stating that they would be compensating him for the crack in the surfboard!!! Whopeee!!! We were q surprised coz no one has called Dar wrt the matter & they also didn't like ask him to take a pic of the crack of something... Aren't u impressed? We were!!! The letter was very professionally worded as well! :)

It is no wonder that SQ has such a good reputation internationally. On our flight there, we were also rather surprised that a flight attendant could remember where I was sitting (when I was returning 2 my seat from the toilet) & asked the colleague to let me in2 my seat first before serving the food! So next time, fly SQ... it is definitely & truly a greater way to fly!!!