COMMENT When I last wrote about the mindset of our civil servants, a particular Tan Sri called me and personally expressed his same displeasure with the current level of service offered by the civil servants.

He belongs to the older generation of civil servants, who believe in ‘Service Above Self’ - a tagline that we Interactors adopted in the 80s as our motto.

Recounting his own experience, he said that he encountered some unpleasant experiences himself with certain government departments, whose service is below par. Certain officers were also being rude to the people whom they are supposed to serve.

That, I thought, was the end of the story. At least one former senior government officer agreed with me. All we could conclude is that the reason for such poor customer service is the lack of leadership provided by their most senior people within the organisation or government agency.

Handling of consumer complaints

If such a mindset is already plaguing the civil servants, what is even more shocking is the way how even a privatised company like Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) handles customer complaints.

TNB used to receive thumbs-up from me, when the late Ani Arope ( photo ) was the chief executive officer and president. But things have deteriorated so much since his days.

The poor service quality provided by TNB today is a reflection of the way how the present chief executive officer and president of TNB manages its staff. I am surprised that Azman Mohd’s contract has been extended by another three years.

The cabinet minister in charge of energy is also indirectly responsible for the way how TNB’s customer care is being managed.

I was telling my neighbour how Ani Arope would have taken customers’ complaints seriously. Being a no-nonsense man, the late Tan Sri would not have tolerated any incident where his men took more than 10 hours to solve a problem that took less than 10 minutes!

On Saturday afternoon (May 30, 2015), about 3pm, I lodged a report to TNB Careline about the fuse next to the TNB meter that was giving out some smoke. No complaint number was given to me and I took it for granted that they already took down my complaint based on the telephone number on their record.

That was my level of trust towards TNB Careline because I had always believed TNB was highly efficient.

The next thing is that no one turned up to fix the problem after many calls had been made by about 11.30pm, some nine hours later. In between, my neighbour had also helped to contact TNB Careline as we had sought her help to supervise the job. My wife also called.

Therefore, TNB would have altogether four phone numbers to contact, but the answer given by the customer service agent was: “The TNB team had contacted you five times and there was no answer.”

Five times on a fixed line, and if there are no answers, why did they not contact any of the mobile numbers given! This is the quality of answer given by the TNB technician who was supposed to look into the complaint.

The issue was only solved by the TNB team from Bangsar at one o’clock in the morning, or some 10 hours later. The fuse was changed within less than 10 minutes, but it took over 10 hours to see TNB finally resolving the issue.

This was after I had tried to contact the manager in charge, Ahmad Barodi Che Noh. All I received was the phone number of another TNB engineer which I decided not to call. After all, technically speaking, a phone call to the TNB Careline should be more than enough! But it wasn’t!

The team from Selayang that was supposed to have attended to the problem claimed that they were busy with another complaint in Selayang and had to fix it first, before turning up at my house which they did at 2am - and calling my mobile phone when the problem was already sorted out and my family was already fast asleep.

At 2.52am, I received another phone call from TNB with a voice message telling me that the complaint was being attended to. This was followed by another call at 3.25am, before I had to blow my top at the TNB Careline staff, who said that the careline was merely trying to make sure that the repair job is being done. For this, I demand a public apology from TNB.

When we called earlier, despite being nearly 12 midnight, there was still no definite answer as to what time they would turn up. Put yourself in my shoes you would be wondering what Government Transformation Plan (GTP) that we are talking about. What is the Key Performance Index or KPI anyway? Is TNB meeting its KPI in the first place?

Similar incident previously

This was in fact not the first time I have experienced such poor service from TNB.

A few years ago, I had complained that a particular streetlight was not working. Because it was important in crime prevention in my neighbourhood, I took the trouble to contact TNB about the malfunctioning streetlight.

I had to go through the same tedious process just to get a streetlight fixed. If I recall correctly, no complaint report was generated based on my first round of complaint.

After the complaint was lodged, I was told that the team from Selayang had reported the status as ‘Problem Fixed’. Yet, physically the streetlight was not lit up at night after more than three days!

Subsequently, I decided enough was enough, and I had to escalate the complaint to the more senior people within the organisation, before a team from Bangsar turned up.

After the problem was fixed, I received a phone call from the Selayang team, and someone had the cheek to ask me why I had brought my complaint to the TNB headquarters in Bangsar.

This is the attitude of TNB’s staff that brings down its good name and I wonder what its CEO would do to improve the quality of service rendered by its frontliners?

A good CEO would have taken personal interest in the complaints and address the issue why there is recurrence of complaints with the Selayang team.

That was at least what Ani Arope did, and others like former Alam Flora CEO, Siraj Abdul Razack, had done to earn themselves the respect from the people. Would Azman Mohd set the example by personally responding to complaints?

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.