I was in Genting casino with my parents over the weekend (I visit Genting once every 5-6 years. LOL). And to be honest, none of us know how to gamble. We ended up spending some time in the slot machine (the confirm-you-will-win-nothing game). But the slot machine we were using broke. And 3 of us were clueless of what to do.

So we approached the staff on duty.

Lim (my dad) : Sorry, can you help me to see the machine. Seems to be broken.

Staff walked straight to the machine, nearly banging my dad and without a smile, without a word.

Staff : (without a smile and in a rude tone) Minimum RM 10.

Staff opened the machine with a key and brute force. And returned the RM 1 to us.

Alvin : Aiya, they should’ve placed a “min bet RM 10″ sign there.

The fella ignored me.

Lim : How can we get the RM 2 balance out?

Staff : (without a smile) You need a card.

Lim : How can we apply the card then?

Staff : (extended his hand, without a smile again) Where’s your IC?

At this point, I was completely pissed. 5 minutes later, he returned.

Alvin : Friend, what’s your name? *looks at tag*. D*****n right? Okay.

Lim : Young man, mind your attitude.

Staff : What did you just say?

Lim : I said, mind your attitude.

And after that, he became better. :T

It’s funny how such a big corporation can allow its employee(s) to be so rude. I do know that some customers are pretty screwed up and only find troubles but no matter how angry or frustrated you are, you must never vent it on the customer. Do that, you get to enjoy for a while and you might also lose your job. It’s a big NO in the service industry.

Patience is the keyword here. You can go on and curse behind the back as long as you want, but when facing the customer, you have to keep your temper in check. Call me two-face or whatever, but that is how things work in the service industry.

Sadly, in Malaysia, we do get a lot of rude customer-facing employees…..and some pretty brainless ones too.

p/s… and i approached 2 casino employees to ask something in English. They told me they cannot understand English. Hmmm….

I’m a big football fan – Manchester United only – and I watch Astro’s Sports channels every weekend for live football matches. During some of the games, there will be this “Vote your man of the match” contest sponsored by Nokia. You just need to SMS them your man-of-the-match and you will stand to win a brand new Nokia phone worth more than RM 1500 !!

Let’s see….

From the perspective of a normal person, it is quite a good deal since I only need to spend RM 1 or RM 2 to get something worth RM 1500 but whether I get it or not, its strictly based on luck. But well, it’s still not a very bad deal since a meal outside would already cost me at least RM 3 – RM 4 nowadays. RM 1 or Rm 2 don’t really mean a thing in our world anymore.

And from the perspective of the contest organizer, it’s a very good opportunity to earn big bucks. There will be thousands and thousands of viewers for those “big matches”, and say 20% of them are feeling lucky and decided to join this man-of-the-match contest. 20% out of ….maybe 100000 viewers = 20000 people, each would vote once = RM 20000. Look at the profit margin?

And they have this more than once a week – maybe 4 or 5 times.

No wonder there are so many SMS contests nowadays.

Anyway, this concept does not apply to SMS contests only. It’s applicable to any form of products or services. So when you want to sell something using such concept, remember a few points.

• Make the process as trouble-free as possible. Example, typing a SMS is simple but sending an entry form is not. And typing the name of a player is simple, but writing why you chose the player is not.
• Make it as cheap as possible. RM 1 SMS charge is not significant and people will not notice, as compared to RM 10 entry form or RM 5 SMS. Also, if your price is cheap, people will be willing to send/purchase more than 1 unit.
• Make your contest or product or whatever you’re selling, as well-known as possible. Spread the words because you’re relying on numbers here.
• Get some partners, preferably the reputable ones so that whatever you are planning to sell will appear more trustworthy.

One bad thing about this is that, there will be a lot of work unless you are doing something like the SMS contests which should be automated. If you’re selling some small items/products, the large amount of items will add up to the cost and all those inventory problems (if you can’t sell them off).

So my suggestion to you is, try finding something which is automated (save time) and preferably, won’t take up too much space (save cost).

Meetings and discussions are very common activities in the office and they are meant to discuss some important things and come out with best possible solutions for the problems faced. But throughout my 5 years of working experience, I couldn’t help but noticed that a lot of these meetings and discussions are actually useless and meaningless.

Why is that so? Here are some of the factors which I can think of for now.

• Agendas and things to be discussed in the meeting or discussion are not set. People do not know what to talk about and most probably end up talking nonsense.
• Most people are just there in the meeting room for the sake of being there, without actually wanting to solve the problem. Their bodies will be there, not their souls.
• The person chairing the meeting and discussion is not experienced enough or he himself tends to talk something unrelated to the objectives. Or worse, the person does not know what he wants from the meeting and just want to get it over as quickly as possible.

In my opinion, if you don’t have the willingness to achieve the objectives of the meeting (which, most of the time, is to solve problems), then don’t conduct a meeting or discussion in the first place because any meeting which fails to achieve the objectives is regarded as meaningless and a waste of time.

I think this kind of meeting is pretty popular

And if you conduct a meeting for the sake of coming out with ANY solution….then please…..don’t start the meeting at all. No solution is better than a very bad solution which might make things worse.

I started this topic after my sister told me that a customer service officer of a company called her up and changed her (the officer’s) statement from “Our company products’ warranty period is only 3 days”  to “After confirming with our senior managers, we have to inform you that our company does not provide warranty coverage to the toys AT ALL“. See the difference?

Call this irresponsible, or whatever. To me, it’s lousy management and leadership. If you can only come out with such lousy solution (it’s actually a worse answer than the first one), then at least, don’t tell me “After confirming with our senior managers”. You are giving me the impression that your whole company, including the senior managers, consists of a bunch of idiots.

My sister and her husband went to Curve the other day to look for a birthday gift for a baby girl. After walking around for few hours, they decided to buy a RM 90 toy imported from Italy called Ch**c*. They wrapped it up, and gave the birthday gift to the baby’s parents (who are based in Melaka) 2 days later.

On the 3rd day, the parents called my sister to tell her that the toy is faulty. My sister got it back on the 4th day and went to the shop to ask for a warranty. The sales girl told her that the warranty period is only 3 days which means my sister was not eligible for it.

Ok, my sister is much prettier than this.

When my sister told me about this, I was quite surprised. I thought the global economy is really bad? The company is really making a big mistake here by doing this. It’s either the employees (management team included) don’t care, or they are really really bad in handling the customers.

In my opinion, there are few things they (the company) can actually do to improve this situation.

• Tell the customers that the warranty period is over and show the proof (it must be stated somewhere – in the receipt, the box, etc).
• Offer to repair the toy but informs the customers that there’s no promise the toy can be repaired. Do it Free-of-charge and promise to give the customers the reply within so and so number of days.
• Extend the warranty period to 1 week since 3 days is ridiculously short.

These 3 are very very common things a business can do to make the customers happier…or at least, lower down the “pissed off” meter to a manageable level. The funny thing is, most businesses don’t do these 3 things. The only thing that most businesses like to do is to piss the customers off.

No wonder so many businesses are closing down nowadays. Serve them right.

UPDATE: The customer service officer in the HQ office managed to “fix” the toy up after we told them that we are VERY disappointed with their service and might even inform our friends about it. No warranty still but at least, they’ve fixed it up.

I’ve been rushing project for the past few days like there’s no tomorrow. As a matter of fact, I’m supposed to submit my work on 23rd of January but I failed to do so. I won’t blame anyone actually and must admit that I’m bit slow, and also my mistakes for misunderstanding the requirements (thus the major revamp few days ago).

Some of my colleagues, on the other hand, preferred to complain about the others outside the company. Honestly speaking, they (not my colleagues) are giving us a lot of headaches but our side is wrong too, for not being able to stop the customers from thinking too much. However, I chose not to join because I feel that there’s nothing much we could do anymore since we’re already at such a stage. The only thing we can do is to work hard together and pull this through. I personally feel that’s not as demotivating as complaining.

Hopefully this won't be seen in customer service department

But don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame my colleagues because I myself am frustrated. But complaining really does not help. And it also doesn’t help to pour oil over fire – or to make someone who is already very angry…angrier. That’s why when some of my teammates started to complain, I chose to make them calm down and look at the bright side of things, rather than making the person even more pissed off.

Thus, the best thing to do is – STOP complaining and STOP discussing such negative things. No point going back to history to say who is right and wrong. We can do that once our project has been completed. For the time being, if it does make you feel better, then feel free to vent your frustration. You can complain, curse, etc. But don’t spend too much time and energy in that because it’s very demotivating and it might make you tired.

But if it doesn’t make you feel better after cursing……then try to minimize it. But the thing here is most people STILL complain a lot about things which they can no longer change…even if they actually feel worse after complaining (instead of better like some people).

My advice to you then is – if it makes you better, then do it for a short while. If it doesn’t, then don’t do it at all because complaining and cursing will not help make the situation better. It’s better to spend your energy elsewhere, where it can be more productive.

Remember that your project is still ongoing and you need to stay motivated to complete it.

And if you want to complain about your job or project being bad and sux…….try to think for those who have been laid off and are currently jobless. Maybe you should be glad you still have a job.