COMMENT Today’s article was spurred by author and international speaker on software development Martin Fowler’s open question, ‘Is Design Dead?’ The writer vented his frustration over service supply chains and business processes which did not take customer expectations into consideration.

Following are six personal experiences which should be seriously examined by players in the respective services sub-sectors.

Experience 1: Advance payments for housing loans

When I was sold the housing loan package, I was told that any amount of advance payment would be accounted for accordingly. When I received the year-end statement for this housing loan, I discovered that for the last six months the bank had not made any monthly deduction from the current account which was specifically set up for this purpose.

housing people Upon making enquiries to the bank officers (this was not an easy task, least of all helpful), I was given to understand that the advanced payments I made caused the confusion. The following month’s bank statement showed six deductions in one day! At the time these deductions were made, the account was RM10 short of the total for six monthly deductions. The bank automatically gave me a credit line of RM10,000 for which I was charged an interest.

After six months of complaining to no avail, I sold the property and exited from the loan package.

Experience 2: No-claim bonus for car insurance

A college student driving her father’s car knocked into mine from behind. I made the necessary reports to the traffic police and the insurance company.

imported cars 161203 When the car’s insurance was renewed the following year, I discovered that the 55% no-claim bonus had been taken away. Reason, there was a claim made on the accident with the college student. After much argument, the insurance company wanted me to produce a police report by the owner of the other car to prove that the accident did happen.

A check with the traffic police records showed that the other party did not make a report on the accident. I had to dig out guidelines on traffic accidents and complained all the way to Bank Negara to get the 55% no-claim bonus re-instated.

Experience 3: Unsolicited credit facilities

A mall-intercept sales personnel signed me for a credit card. I received two statements for this credit card, one for actual usage of the credit card and another for a credit facility which I had no need of. I had a difficult time arguing with bank officers, one after another, requesting for the unsolicited credit facility to be removed. I was given a lecture that I should have returned the unneeded facility card as soon as I received it.

Among the thousands who received unsolicited financial facility offers by mail, I wonder if I was the only one who did not comply with the bank’s instructions. This matter was resolved when I also cancelled the principal card.

Experience 4: Cancelling account of loyal customer

I am one of those credit card users who always pay in full and always rounded up the amounts in the monthly payment cheques. Two weeks ago when I unsuccessfully made a charge to this credit card from a foreign bank, there was an error message: ‘Stolen card’. I quickly called the bank. I was told that the bank cancelled my card for failure to make payments for four consecutive months.

credit card swipe 070605 My latest statement showed a credit of over RM1,000. When I questioned the bank why three of my payment cheques were presented for clearance within the span of one week, I was asked to provide proof that I mailed out the cheques for each month!

Since I was not able (‘prohibited’ is the right word) to speak to someone at an officer level, I was asked to confirm my postal address for the credit refund and that approval for a new card would be up to the bank’s management. I had been using this credit card since 1993.

Experience 5: Unauthorised usage of another’s facility

A year ago, I applied for broadband usage of a local provider with the understanding that I could cancel it within the cooling-off period. The next day when the company called to confirm my subscription I informed the lady not to activate the account as I wished to cancel it. I did not even collect the modem which was necessary for access to the service. The cancellation did not happen.

Someone activated the account and used the modem to access the service. The company kept deducting usage fees from the initial amount taken from my credit card on the day of signing up. When that was finished, I was invoiced for subsequent usage. No amount of reasoning could get the service provider to cancel the account.

A fortnight ago, someone from a legal firm called telling me to either pay up or face legal action. Again I explained the situation to him. He told to do three things: (1) send in a photocopy of MyKad, (2) send in a sworn statutory declaration that I had never used the provider’s service, and (3) a copy of a police report on the misuse.

I had not even completed the configuration for the service, what misuse should I report on? I requested for an email to be sent to me as I would not take action on his verbal instructions - faceless via a telephone. Still waiting for the email. I began to wonder on the possibilities of being blacklisted in CCRIS - the Central Credit Reference Information System at Bank Negara.

Experience 6: Poor Agency control

On moving into my new house, I was indeed pleased to receive a note that on such-and-such a Sunday, the land line telephone service provider would be available at the community clubhouse to sign up new users. Two months after signing up and not receiving any news on my application, I called the office of the provider.

I was told that there was no record of my application. Worse, the agency and the names of the persons I met at the club house had been terminated by the provider. I was asked to make a fresh application.

Training in customer relations

The 10th Malaysia Plan had targeted the services sector to contribute 61.1 percent of the country’s GDP by 2015. If service problems usually originate from human errors, then more than half the workforce of the country would require retraining in customer relations.

If ‘hiccups’ like the ones mentioned here are allowed to continue, and positive steps are not taken to arrest them, service providers could be like the proverbial ostrich displaying beautiful growth figures, and simultaneously churning up attrition rates due to customer dissatisfaction.

Attention from the top

In each of the examples above, it took months for the complaints to reach management levels. One was summarily dealt with at the call centre level. Outsourcing channel break-downs, inter-departmental complexities, agency inadequacies, poor service level monitoring, and a host of others, were used as excuses for these incidents. These were the providers’ problems, not the customers’,

That errors kept re-surfacing in monthly statements and the mistakes were allowed to be repeated over again, reflected sheer signs of inadequacies of internal control over business processes. Thus, the question I raised in my 2006 doctoral thesis on call centres remained unanswered: ‘How serious are the service principals in resolving these customer problems?’

Services Mediation Authority

A Financial Media Bureau was established for the public to voice their grouses on financial related services. What about the rest of the 27 subsectors which the government has liberalised? ( www.mida.gov.my , 2010). What percentage of the growth figures reported is rotten to the core?

Martin Fowler must have been really upset when he chose the words, ‘Is Design Dead?’ for the title of his article on software development. IT design flaws were usually discovered at the testing stage. If the designer was still on the project, he could change the designs for re-programming in order that the project could be rescued.

However, as pointed out by Fowler, programmer entropy (information disambiguation) might set in if the designer was no longer around or the project manager refused to make changes to the design. The outcome could be another episode of ‘Romance of the Change Agent with IT’.

The author feels there is an urgent need for a services mediation authority to not just provide an avenue for customer-centred arbitration, but also to audit and monitor service providers on the complaints received.

DR DAPHNE LOKE was a senior officer in the Malaysian civil service. She was also Associate Lecturer of University of Abertay Dundee, UK, for Public Sector Management. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Development Studies (Political Science).