The Role of Service Culture in Customer Loyalty

Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to explain how successful or unsuccessful service culture may contribute to negative and positive encounters. I believe that customer service plays a huge role in customer loyalty. I will be sharing my delightful experience with Changi Airport Group (CAG) and my disappointing experiences with Foodpanda. CAG (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. provides airport and management services while Foodpanda is a food delivery service.

Delightful Experience

My family and I was bound for Krabi, Thailand for holidays. Our flight was scheduled at 0900hrs and we should be at the counter at least 2 hours before the flight. Unfortunately, en route to the airport we were stuck in a massive jam. As we arrived at the airport, we had 5 minutes to rush to the counter before they were close for check in. Amidst the chaos, a CAG staff named “Hannah” approached as she heard our complaints. She greeted us with a sweet smile and immediately brought us to the check in counter. I was in awe at how she was dedicated in helping us as she did not mind pushing some luggage for us. We arrived at the counter in time for check in and she stayed throughout the check in process with my family. She also managed to calm my mother down who was having a panic attack due to all the rush and commotion happening around at that moment. I really was very happy that the ambassador was very helpful and provided a very good customer service experience. We sent a complementary email to CAG and received a reply that Hannah was rewarded with “Employee of The Month” for her tremendous effort.

Service Philosophy/Mission

In my opinion, this is due to successfulness of CAG’s service philosophy. As Changi Airport is one of the world’s best airports, employers of CAG have upskilled their staff to serve passengers with their best abilities.

We strive to help our employees reach their highest potential and encourage them to take a proactive role in learning and development. (Changi Airport Group)

We conduct programmes that create opportunities to enhance their professional and management skills, knowledge and abilities. (Changi Airport Group)

Motivators and Rewards

I believe Hannah will continue to do amazingly in her work as she was rewarded. Employees work better when their efforts and dedication are recognised by public or by the management. They feel motivated and will work better to improve their performance. Employees will appreciate rewards in various forms no matter “employee-of-the-month’ rewards or financial rewards/incentives. Many are happy to receive rewards and recognition.

Delivery System

Hannah stayed throughout the entire check in process and assisted my mother. She showed resources like calming my mother using her calming techniques. She was very committed during the event. She portrayed her professionalism and her empathy by adopting the “feel, felt and found” technique. She mentioned sentences like “I understand how you feel Ma’am. I would be as anxious if I am late for my flight.”, “I have assisted anxious passengers who felt the same way as you.” and “I found that if there is helped extended by representative, it would help so much with the whole process.”

Employee roles and expectation

From the experience above, I would also like to add that the CAG representative has met most of the employee roles and expectation from the way she acknowledges and assisted my family the process. I can see that she really knows her work procedure well and what are the steps needed for the process to be a smooth one.

Disappointing Experience

Food delivery services are no longer uncommon amongst Singaporeans. Many have omitted long queues henceforth orders their food online with just a few clicks. Foodpanda has been in trend for quite some time as well. However, some businesses have unsuccessful service cultures which has led to many unpleasant experiences. Personally, I have encountered a few disappointing experiences. I have ordered a large order for my family and I. Order has been scheduled to be delivered in 30 minutes and we waited. After waiting about approximately 45 minutes, we realised our food still has not arrived. I decided to check on my Foodpanda app and it kept mentioning “20 minutes away” which was what I checked about 15 minutes ago. I started going on the live chat to check what was going on, but it was difficult to get a representative. After waiting for another 5-10 minutes, I finally got in touch with a representative and I proceed to share and mentioned that I would like to cancel my order. The waiting time made my family and I lose our appetite and we do not want to wait any longer. I would hope that I could cancel my order and receive some compensation, but the representative insist that the orders were almost ready. I rechecked the app and the status remain the same. I went on the live chat again to complain my situation. The representative acknowledged that I would like to cancel however without refund. I felt forced and displeased. Without wanting to waste money, I rejected the cancellation and proceeded with the order. We waited again and simultaneously checked the Foodpanda app and turns out that the order status has turned from “delivering” into “delivered” but without us having our orders. So this time I really got pissed off with the orders, I decided to call the representative one more time and the last time, but still they wouldn’t resolve the issue and instead just keep repeating that the app state that the food has been delivered to us despite me saying countless of times that we didn’t receive our orders since 1 hour ago, we go tired of dealing with the representative and ended up buying from the nearest coffee shop.

Service Delivery System

Based on the situation, I felt that the representative was avoiding the issue. He was far from being empathetic as well. Instead of minimising waiting time, he insisted that we had to wait even longer. There were many uncomfortable conversations transpired. I felt forced. In addition, the rider was dishonest by not delivering the order at all. Both factors have led to unsuccessful service delivery system.

Employee roles and expectation

In my opinion, I felt both rider and the representative were not being professional. The representative failed at convincing us that the food is going to be delivered. He was also unclear about what was happening. He was unable to resolve a conflict. I believe he should have had the final say by allowing me to have my refund. Problem-solving capability would be useful in this situation as well. For the rider’s issue, I feel like there was no integrity in him as he went missing with a customer’s order. In fact, his lateness was still quite acceptable as I understand that it involves travelling and waiting. However, going missing and uncontactable is not right. Both rider and representative did not meet employees’ roles and expectation.

Employee Empowerment

For a start, I strongly believe that the representative was unsure of his empowerment. He should have a final say of proceeding with a refund. Instead, he avoided the situation and left us in doubt. Ideally, informing a senior would have helped him in this issue and guide him about the guidelines about the company.

Training

I highly encourage Foodpanda to be more stringent with how they conduct their customer service trainings. There would a minority of employees who does not have any customer service background and would have trouble providing extraordinary customer service skills. Undoubtedly, employees’ knowledge on products and services the company can provide is important; Customer services skills is also needed to be demonstrated.

My suggestion would be to have a senior conducting a performance appraisal by vetting conversations that transpired between employees and customers. This will allow employees to learn from their mistakes and learn to provide better customer service skills.

Challenges

Delightful experience

Service Personnel

I believe acting as a frontman of Changi Airport requires a lot of patience as employees will be meeting many passengers from different walks of life. It may not always be a positive day. They may come across challenges like language barriers. This may occur when meeting with people with different languages or age group. However, it requires initiative from employees to download translation applications to ensure they can extend help to passengers. This is essential as it may lead to slow communication and misunderstandings.

Dealing with angry passengers could be a challenge as well. Especially when events are beyond our control. An example would be in an event of flight delays due to natural disasters. As natural disasters are unavoidable, passengers often get upset as we do not have answers to their worries and queries.

Organisation

Upon recruitment, every employee will be sent for training. This is to educate employees to practice work based on company's guidelines. However, there are a small percentage of employees who do not abide which leads to poor performances at work. Every frontman holds a responsibility of portraying good image or reputation of an organisation. If an employee abuses the organisation's service delivery system, it will lead to bad reputation and affects customer's loyalty.

Disappointing experience

Service Personnel

Dealing with customers online or through live chats can be a challenge as representatives ought to be able to resolve matter quickly. However, that will require problem-solving capabilities which ensues from their knowledge gained and experiences. It could be a problem if employees do not have any related background which will lead to poor decision-making. Also, they are expected to be fast as there are high volume of calls daily. It could be infeasible and may lead to burnout. `

Organisation

Companies value employees’ integrity as it is one of the roles and expectations. Unreliable delivery riders may be of a concern to food delivery companies. Based on my disappointing experience, that is a prime example of how such employees could bring bad reputation to the organisation. Customers highly depend on riders to have their food delivered. So, undelivered delivery or untimely delivery could upset them which will too affect customer’s loyalty. Substandard services as such will cause adverse consequences like hopping to other suitable food delivery companies like Grabfood or Deliveroo.

Conclusion

In conclusion, being in a service industry requires a broad knowledge about the products and services. Many factors like service philosophy, delivery system and training structures may lead to a positive or negative service culture. The service triangle is one of the important aspects for the service industry. Proper strategy structure will be able to support organisation’s frontman to customarily achieve high standards of service. Hence, lead to a satisfied customer. There are also factors like poor service delivery, poor training that leads to high churn rate and disappointed customer. In order to avoid the negative service culture, organisation’s need to ensure that their employees are properly trained and well updated of the company’s policies.

References

1. Changi Airport Group. Investing in Our People’s Long-term Growth https://www.changiairport.com/corporate/careers/life-at-changi.html