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Thursday, August 5, 2010

SingPost all boxed in

Someone who did not give him name, made a comment today (August 5) about SingPost service after reading a post, "Slow service at SingPost", that I wrote months ago.

I thought it was an interesting encounter he had with the company and the experience is worth sharing to show its inflexibility.

Anonymous wrote: "Chanced upon your post when I googled on 'boo' service from Singpost. Yours is just a single encounter, mine has been years long of disappointments and life shortening.

"Anyway, my latest 'boo' with them ...

"I have a parcel coming from Japan via EMS. With the tracking number, Isee that the parcel will be delivered today. But there is nobody home to receive it today so I called Speedpost line early AM to have it redelivered on Saturday morning instead. Save them a wasted trip, right?

"But the hotline staff tells me the item will be sent out with the postman and she can't do anything. I think to myself, can't she call the postman?? Don't they have ways to communicate with field staff?

"And then even though we are both sure nobody will receive it and it will be a failed delivery and I reiterated that unless I got ghost at home, she cannot make the redelivery request for me rightaway.

"She wants me to wait till the postman record as undeliverable at the end of the day, then I call in again tomorrow to make the same redelivery request.

"She say it's a standard process ... isn't this stupid and redundant? Why act on the problem tomorrow when we already know it now and can act now?

"Speedpost is so efficient, right? Efficient in their standard processes which do not cater for exceptional handling nor recognise real situation needs first.

"And customers have to 'suit' them, not the other way round."

Looks like no one in SingPost is thinking out-of-the-box, er, sorry, out-of-the-Postbox!!!

2 comments:

Shionge said...

Indeed I agreed with Anonymous because he/she is being proactive by calling them. I reckoned it is this particular staff that is not flexible.

Sometimes if we are lucky, we might just meet someone at Singpost who is really pro-active and will do whatever they could to inform the field staff.

Perhaps Singpost can through this, empower their staff to 'bend' the rules sometimes and not be so rigid with the SOP or policy.

Good post :)

Unknown said...

I had similar experience with Singpost: I had signed up for a broadband package with Singtel and had fixed a date for the modem to be delivered to me. However, due to a change in flight time I realised I could not be home to receive the delivery. On an initial call to Singtel I was told the delivery date cannot tbe changed because instructions had already been passed on to Singpost. On a subsequest call I encountered a more helpful service officer who agreed to cancel the delivery appointment and allow me to do a self-collection when I returned to S'pore. Great, I thought. Two days before the previously set appointment date I received a SMS from Singpost reminding me of the delivery. I immediately replied that the delivery appointment had been cancelled and gave them the name of the Singtel officer to refer to. Singpost came anyway and wasted their trip.