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The CEO must ultimately be responsible for service excellence in the company, be totally committed and take full charge to make improvements, said Mr Liew Mun Leong, President and Chief Executive Officer of CapitaLand Group. Disagreeing with the tendency to put the blame on not having the right service DNA, lack of training or talented people in front line jobs, he believed that the CEO and his leadership must be observant enough to spot lapses of service standards, however trivial, and instill discipline for immediate recovery actions.
Other CEOs and business leaders who attended the inaugural industry forum organised by SMU’s Institute of Service Excellence on 1 March 2010 agreed, citing many anecdotes of dwindling service standards in Singapore. Recalling the recent results of the Customer Satisfaction Index of Singapore (CSISG) 2009 released in January this year, Mr Liew noted that only two sectors – Finance & Insurance, and Healthcare – showed improvements while the remaining six sectors did worse than before. This is reflected in Singapore achieving only a slight improvement in our overall national satisfaction score from 67.8 (in CSISG 2008) to 68.
From the recent study, ISES recommends that companies put priority in delivering their promises consistently instead of focusing efforts to wow customers. It was found that even though there exists a strong positive correlation between meeting expectations and customer loyalty, the incremental benefit of customer delight is much smaller than the incremental damage of customer disappointment.
“Service standards in Singapore have been falling, and this appalling situation appears chronic. If the service sector continues to decline in this way, it will affect Singapore’s competitiveness. If not reversed, we will lose to cities like Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai.”
– Mr Liew Mun Leong, President and Chief Executive Officer of CapitaLand Group
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| Mr Liew Mun Leong, President and Chief Executive Officer of CapitaLand Group
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