Service With A Grunt

[JDDavao II]

 

Service With A Smile is a very old business motto, at least in the US. Here in the Philippines, the saying must be Service With A Grunt.

Today is the first full day of PLDT DSL/Landline service we've had in four days. Cellphone  complaints to them brought the old, "We're working very hard on it." Twitter pleadings were met with silence for three days, then an acknowledgment was sent, saying that, "...as checked, your service is affected by a network trouble in your area." Another message followed that the problem already had a ticket number. I'm almost sure that both messages came after service was restored but we were out so I can't be certain.

While out yesterday, one errand was at BPI. MISTAKE! We waited two hours in the corral just to get to the counter. We took our number in a timely manner, N213. Then we looked at the screen over the teller counter. "Now serving N162." Sheesh! At 1:30, the woman sitting next to my wife leaned over and told her that she'd been waiting since 11 AM. 

The number system kept glitching. It froze up, making the tellers have to call out numbers. Then it leaped ahead to N267. All the while, people would walk in, go up to the counter and hand things to the tellers that for some reason took priority. There were four desk people and two more people trying to sign up we milling cattle for credit cards.

We were finally allowed to approach the Seat Of All Power and make our dollar withdrawal. We kissed the teller's ring and left the palace at 3:30. 

Later I noticed that TM, a Globe affiliate, seemed to have been slowly siphoning off my load for days. I'm deaf and do not call anyone. I only text and then only to my wife. I noticed the disappearing load because I bought a 40MB data promo to check email and Twitter to complain about our internet. Two hours after buying it, TM sent a message that I was now out of promo and using load for data. What?! So I was out of data and out of load to buy data.

Ranting on Twitter brought Globe's head up and a customer service drone offered to talk to me via Direct Message. Horse poop! I'd had about as much service as I could stand for one weekend!

I complained bitterly to my bottle of Black Bush. I hope everyone else had a better weekend.

 

[Dave Hounddriver]

57 minutes ago, JDDavao said:

All the while, people would walk in, go up to the counter and hand things to the tellers that for some reason took priority

They are getting their priority number through the online system.  You really need to look it up and take advantage of that at BPI or you will be waiting a long time now.

[Benington]

BPI and PLDT, are definitely, from my experience and from the accounts of posters on forums such as this one, good examples of giving poor service here. Although In BPI's case it seems to me to be  a victim of its own success in attracting customers.

But in general I find the level of service here much better than back in the UK. You can actually find a shop assistant here! 

[bigpearl]

Marry your bottle of Black Bush as we do every day, lay back and relax as we do but I have to ask, 40 Mb? Like going into the Sari Sari store with 1 Peso, what can I get for that? Not much.

Electronic transfers are spectacular in the/all banking systems and if you need lots of cash, make an appointment with your manager, a phone call for the appointment, a 2 to 5 minute wait and your business is conducted efficiently. Opening bank accounts can be difficult but establishing a repertoire with the boss/manager is easy, have seen the line up of seats and patient customers and one does not need to go down that path. Seems to work for us. Research and more research then the smile and the building of a relationship or what is perceived to be a relationship but makes transactions flow smoothly.

Cheers, Steve.

[bigpearl]

8 minutes ago, Benington said:

BPI and PLDT, are definitely, from my experience and from the accounts of posters on forums such as this one, good examples of giving poor service here. Although In BPI's case it seems to me to be  a victim of its own success in attracting customers.

But in general I find the level of service here much better than back in the UK. You can actually find a shop assistant here! 

Beat them off with pointed sticks, very disconcerting initially but once you understand and accept the salespeople in PH it is refreshing and while they are trying to sell do give extremely good service and as you say Benington, they are there for all to see and mostly offer good and forthcoming sales assistance, very unlike western norms where you have to chase them down when they see you looking for them, say no more.

Cheers, Steve.

[JDDavao II]

2 hours ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

They are getting their priority number through the online system.  You really need to look it up and take advantage of that at BPI or you will be waiting a long time now.

Thanks, Dave. I didn't know that but it turns out, asking her just now, my wife did. So, now she has to cut a switch to be beaten with.

[JDDavao II]

1 hour ago, bigpearl said:

...I have to ask, 40 Mb? Like going into the Sari Sari store with 1 Peso, what can I get for that? Not much.

 

I was using the wife's data via WiFi thru her phone on my phone at home. I just wanted something to grab a quick look at my accounts with. I've signed on to the 40MB promo many times before and had it last for nearly the whole 3 days. Anyway, I've got Brand Y now and 30 days to use 400MB of free data for adding load.

Quote

Electronic transfers are spectacular in the/all banking systems and if you need lots of cash, make an appointment with your manager, a phone call for the appointment, a 2 to 5 minute wait and your business is conducted efficiently. Opening bank accounts can be difficult but establishing a repertoire with the boss/manager is easy, have seen the line up of seats and patient customers and one does not need to go down that path. Seems to work for us. Research and more research then the smile and the building of a relationship or what is perceived to be a relationship but makes transactions flow smoothly.

2

I'll make sure we avail of the priority number thingie Dave mentioned above from now on. I agree about establishing a rapport with the manager and we used to have a good relationship with most of the "desk people". They completely redid our branch a couple of months ago and seem to have included the "desk people" as none of them were familiar. But the AC is very comfortable while-u-wait.

[expatuk2014]

Luckily my wife is a senior Citizen which helps a lot,  paying the water bill monthly 

She just walks up to the senior counter and is usually out in 5 mins !

My wife has 2 credit cards which we pay in savemore,

And we pay Meralco and Pldt in Robinsons

Even Robinsons and most other Supermarkets have senior lanes.

But overall i find the service here brilliant although saying that 

Recently our Universal Cable channel was changed to E!

We asked the cable co when we were going to get Universal back

The customer sevice girl couldnt really understand what my wife was saying.

So they sent 2 engineers out the next day who checked the TV and the relevant channel showed it was universal although it was actually showing the E! Channel with aome Korean program.

After a couple of phone calls he told us the Universal channel no longer on !,,,😭

I later discovered that NBC are no longer transmitting Universal to Asia !!

 

[Benington]

11 hours ago, bigpearl said:

Beat them off with pointed sticks, very disconcerting initially but once you understand and accept the salespeople in PH it is refreshing and while they are trying to sell do give extremely good service and as you say Benington, they are there for all to see and mostly offer good and forthcoming sales assistance, very unlike western norms where you have to chase them down when they see you looking for them, say no more.

Cheers, Steve.

As a foreigner, engage in too much badinage and you will attract more sales assistants around you.Then you will know how politicians feel when surrounded by a gaggle of reporters! Weekday afternoons are the times when the under use of sales assistants can be seen at its maximum, but  even on Saturday afternoons they are not fully engaged most of the time. Some of this may be to do with an over-expansion of Malls as they all try to compete with each other. When MOA opened many Malls within a 10 kms radius expanded.

Generally Ph private sector employment practices work on the standard profit maximizing basis, with staff rapidly hired and fired....but with these large Mall operators there's something else going on. To my mind they're operating more like Public Sector than Private Sector organizations. Just wondering whether they like to be seen doing their bit to keep the high and under-reported unemployment rate down here, especially for the large numbers of young people graduating each year. In return they get special government consideration? Well we know they do anyway, but they would maintain it and get more.

In Moscow in the Soviet era I read that staff at GUM, the government department store, would be positioned at the top and bottom of each escalator. Here, the equivalent over-employment can be seen in the excess of sales staff. 

 

[scott h]

13 hours ago, JDDavao said:

I complained bitterly to my bottle of Black Bush.

 

I too have been very close to lashing out at what I perceive to be complete incompetence, poor business management, illogic behavior and just plain stupidity.

Then I take a breath and realize that I moved here to escape the rat rase of a 1st world country where time is  money so don't waist mine or yours. I kame here for a different way of life, a cheaper way of life and a more relaxed way of life. If I allow some of the differences affect me, well I should have just stayed in the states where I could be upset in complete comfort.

Does it help? not always,,,but it helps