GiGa Singapore Ambassador

I wrote for GiGa.de as a Ambassador for Singapore back in early 2000. And occasionally did live phone interview with the hosts. How I came about this was, my boyfriend(then) had his webcam turned to his television and this show called, GiGa was showing. I asked him what it was all about. He told me that it’s a variety cum tech show. They also had GiGa Games.

I checked out their website,which is still around,and saw they had this special section looking for people who were living outside Germany to write about the countries they came from. I was pretty excited over it and wrote to them. And as they say, “the rest is history”. I got a part in the “Ambassador section” and wrote religiously about the latest happening in Singapore.

The video that you’re watching is a live phone interview I did with the show. I had a lot of fun being one of the Ambassador on Giga. I kinda miss writing for the show!. Hopefully, they have something new in the future!. Maybe a reunion would be great!.

Vodcast Blopper!

As you can tell, I had a hard time trying to get the sentence right! This was recorded in my hotel room in Antwerp, Belgium. I now know how it is like being a Presenter!. So instead of publishing a well done first Vodcast of mine,I decided to put this one as my first Vodcast!.

REWE

A couple of days,okay,a week or so back. I went to the mall here in the city to get some Christmas Chocolate Calender for my nieces and nephew back in Singapore. So I went down to the ground floor of the mall where there is a supermarket called REWE to get it.

As I was browsing around and found what I was looking for,decided to purchase and head to the cashier. I was in the line and an old lady was in front of me paying for her groceries. So I waited,the line started to get long due to the fact that ONE-UNO-SATU-EIN-UN(I could go on with international word for ONE) cashier counter is available. What would a cashier that has basic customer service skills do with this situation?. First, she must call in the other cashier to open the other counter or worst case,if there is no other cashier available,she must clear the line as quickly as possible. What did she do?. Talked to her follow colleagues who were heading out for their breaks or where ever it was they were going but from the look of it(carrying their wallets and cellphone)they were out for their breaks. 

It was a good 5-6 minutes that she was talking to them and what was the reaction of the rest of the people in the line?. We were mad. What did we do?. Nothing. Why?. It’s just the way it is here. There is YOUR answer dear government of Germany. Are you going to do anything about it?. No. Plain and simple. The typical mindset of,I would say,75% or more Germans here. It could be that the temperature in winter drops to minus 10 or something and I reckon it froze the brain that they have there in their heads. It hurts to read what I have to say but look around and see how well you’re being treated to by the Sales Personnel here. I am not saying that I do not see good customer service here in Germany but Germans can do much better at it. I believe they can. What say you?.

The Adventures Of Baby Cat and Baby Doggy – “Translated”.

“Meow Meow?”, Baby Cat said to Baby Doggy while still looking out the window with his paws and face rubbing the window as he speaks or rather meowed, watching the human kids playing at the playground near the building they were staying. “Do you think they will let us go play at the playground today too?”. “Wooof woof”, Baby Doggy replied. “Well, I’m not sure what they have in mind today..”.

It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon in a small town called Karlsruhe. In the land where everyone is speaking in a special language called, German. Not known to Baby Cat and Baby Doggy. Where they came from, everyone speaks the animal language or in Baby Doggy exact words are,”Woof Woof Woof!”. “It’s call the Baby Animal Language!”.

The Babies decided to ask the humans if they would bring them to the playground today. Climbing down from the window panel along with Baby Doggy, Baby cat who is a tab bit cubby,”Meow!”. I mean, furry. Had some trouble trying to jump onto the desk which was near the window panel. “Woof woof!”,Baby doggy said. “Just jump,Baby Cat!” who has already made it to the table. Baby Cat took a deep breath and jumped off from the window panel. He flew a few inches off into the air and waving his paws franticly and with a loud thud, he almost made it to the desk. His rear paws were dangling from the edge of the desk. Baby Doggy came to his rescue,pulling Baby Cat onto the desk. “Woof woooof!”. “Baby Cat,you really need to go easy on the chocolates!”. Baby Cat gave him a shocking expression. “Meow meow meow meow?!”. “But it’s my favorite!” and following Baby Doggy jumping down to the chair and making their way to the floor.

Standing at 25 centimeter and 20 centimeter respectively, all the furniture around them in the bedroom were,to them,extremely massive. Hopping towards the open door,passing the bathroom,turning to the left where the massive bookshelf stands and towards the red couch where the humans were sitting talking to each other. The Babies stopped where the human feet were,meowed and woofed to get their attention. Baby Cat tried hopping higher,with no success. Baby Doggy waved his paws at the humans.

“Woof woof woof?”, Baby doggy said to Baby Cat. “Do you think we should climb on their legs?”. “Meow meow!”,Baby Cat replied. “Yeah,let’s do that!”. And so the Babies started making their way up to the human feet until one of the human looked down. “Ah, the Babies are here!”,exclaimed the human lady. The lady human picked the Babies up from the floor and settled them next to her. “Baby Cat, I really think we should wash you sometime soon”, said the tanned human lady with long black hair to Baby Cat. Baby Cat looked at her and smelled himself. *sniff sniff* “Meow Meow?,he said. “I don’t smell anything”. The human lady smiled. The babies turned to the other human who was sitting next to them on the sofa with his big shinning television(MacBook Pro)on his lap and typing furiously on it. “Woof Woof woooof?”, Baby Doggy said to the human. “Do we really need to take a bath?”.
The other human fixed his fingers to the “television” and turn only his head to face Baby Doggy. “We can wash the both of you on the sink and you can play with the rubber ducky,if you want!”. And went on,”You’ll like the warm water and the soap too! Won’t you like that,Babies?”. The Babies looked at each other,thinking and turned to the human lady,”Meow! Woof!”,they exclaimed. “Okay!”.

“Meow Meow Meow?!”,Baby Cat tried asking the humans. “Can we then play at the playground today?”. The humans thought for a second. And nodded their heads. The other human with a week long beard who has his television on his lap said to the Babies,”But you know that once you start to get dirty again,we have to wash you.”. The Babies folded their ears and sighed. The human continued by saying the magical word. “You’ll get chocolates if you take a bath…!”. At the sound of the word,the two furry stinky Babies jumped around,meowed and woofed happily.

TBC…

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly- The Evolution

On my last bad customer related post, I have you given a rough idea of extremely bad customers that I have encounter which I have put into various categories. I asked this question to myself a lot when I was working in the stores. To why some customers are just plain nasty? 

Look, everyone are consumers,including myself. Everyone goes out to shop, be it buying groceries, apparels, equipments-whatever. The bottom line is, everyone shops. But to shop with an attitude is another thing. Do the retail personnel deserves to be treated with no respect by the nasty customers? These people, the retail personnels,are there to help you and not working against you. Yes, I do noticed bad customer services also but I will come to that in the near future. We are there to listen to your needs,wants and requests. What we don’t need from costumers are,disrespecting us as professionals,being rude,having absolutely obnoxious manners and so on.

In the “Perfect World” which is obviously not where we are all in right now, if everyone plays their part in respecting each other and understanding one and other,everyone will be happy. But reality check(for me),it is not as so. Though, I am optimistic that everyone can work on that. I can feel it in every fiber in me. 

Move the ego aside,the pride(though i don’t understand why there is a need to,it’s just shopping guys!),the arrogance(you may have all the money in the world but what is more important is the goodness in ones soul-it shines through)and the same goes to Retailers. It takes two to make it happened-never one sided.  

With that said, in my coming blog entries, I am going to be very brutal in my observations at the Sales Personnels here in Karlsruhe,Germany where I am living now. I have been here a couple times and seen(still seeing)bad customer services. I want to change that too. Hopefully, the German government will imposed Excellent Customer Service programs to all Retailers. The outcome of this, you will see everyone being less grumpy in the streets of Germany, more tourist will flock to this country,gives the economy a boost and everyone enjoys the pleasant shopping experience. Call me naive but I call myself determine.

“Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter”

I was scrolling through Amazon.com for books to purchase and as I was checking out the bestsellers section. I found an amazing brilliant book which is a must have for everyone!. It is a extremely good book for people in the Hospitality industry also. 

“Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter” written by an Author named-The Waiter. I guess I am not alone at this battle to have the table turned around to the Customers to have their manners straighten up. And to have a two way great shopping(or in this case,eating)experience. Which I am still hoping that it will pick up very soon!. 

“Product Description
According to The Waiter, eighty percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining twenty percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths. Waiter Rant offers the server’s unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places. Through outrageous stories, The Waiter reveals the secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and how to keep him from spitting in your food. The Waiter also shares his ongoing struggle, at age thirty-eight, to figure out if he can finally leave the first job at which he’s truly thrived.” – Amazon.com

Go get the book and I am sure you will be amused at the fact that you might find yourself in it too.

Illustrations.

I was looking around for some Illustration applications where I can download onto my Mac and put up my artworks here on my blog and I found this really cool site where you can sketch online. I know,this is nothing of what I usually write about but it is an exception. 

The site,to me has this dreamy, 1800 era, French-sipping-cappuccino-at-the-cafe,kinda feel to it. I love it. It´s call -odopod. You can head down to the site and check it out. Draw a sketch or two!.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – Con´t.

In my previous blog entry, I have given you a front seat to my line of work and the different types of customers I have accounted. Here are more categories I have come up with. 

 

• The Using Your Feet Instead of Your Hands Syndrome. 

This is the other bad habit of a human being with a brain/mind. This only works with buying shoes. I do not understand and still don´t,why customers use their feet to lift the shoes from the display shelve,put in on the floor(still using their feet), try it on and then – throw it back onto the shelve!. Doing all that single handed(no pun intended).

I do not notice the customers here in Germany doing so but mostly in Singapore. Mainly women. Is it a difficult task, to use your hands to take the shoes from the shelves, place them on the floor nicely, try it on and place it back to the shelves?. I do not reckon they would do the same if the shoes are from a high end label like Gucci that costs S$1500 or more. 

• What´s My Size?

Actually, there is no harm in this question at all. It takes a skilled experience Sales Personnel to mentally estimate and let the customer know what his or her exact size of pants, T Shirt and so on. But if you are asked, point blank-”What´s my size?”. The customer already know her size but in self denial. And choose not to listen to the Sales Personnel. 

For example, a while back, I was serving a lady trying to purchase a bikini. She was rather big to squeezed into a US size 8 and in truth she is a size US 12. I did mention to the lady that perhaps she should try the size US 12 instead. Putting it nicely that, the cutting of the bikini is smaller which is not, of course. How else do you reckon I should tell her?. After a couple of minutes, she decided to get a US 10 instead. It was close to the truth though. I know, sometimes you just have to wonder. Then again – “Customer are always right!”.

• Spread The Clothes On The Floor. 

This caters to those who have not noticed there is a simple fixture inside the fitting room to hang the clothes you want to try on and not dump in on the floor. Remember, all the clothes you throw on the floor will be purchased by another customer if you decided not to purchase it yourselves. Be considerate. I do not see why, I have to blog about something of a no brain er like this, to inform people. If there are stains on the items, other customers will not be able to purchased it, the item will go under the “damage items”, send back to the warehouse, Supervisors/Managers will have to answer to each item under the “damage items”, all those items which are approved as being damage, will then be send back to the main warehouse of that brand which costs heaps.

There is a lot of movement and operation details in the Retail Industry. To avoid this at all cost, customers do your part. Be considerate. 

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly – The Beginning.

It has been a while since I had this idea to have illustrations,which I will try to have to done soon,on different types of customers which you can see where you fall into. And if you are honest with yourself – you put yourself in the right category. Here are some of the categories I have. 

• The Overly Nice Customer. 

The Japanese fall under this category. Not that I am complaining. I really like serving the Japanese customers with my basic Japanese language and well equipped with a calculator. The typical Japanese really love to know how much it cost in Yen thus you see them typing furiously on their “Hello Kitty” calculators and after seeing how inexpensive the item at hand is, you will constantly hear them say, “Yasui!!” also not forgetting the repeated nodding of their heads in pure excitement. When they find the item really nice, they´ll go,”Kawaii!!”. Over and over again. It does gives you a headache after 5 minutes of hearing it.

I have a lot of memorable moments with Japanese customers while working at Quiksilver in the most “ghost town” area of Singapore – Millenia Walk. The store was located not far from the Duty Free shop and the tour bus which carries mostly Japanese and Korean tourists will make their stop there first. Often we get Japanese surfer hunks walking into the store and of course,us feasting our eyes on them! Okay, let´s not digress. 

To sum it all, the Japanese are the most polite, courteous, well mannered, wealthy(they don´t ask for discounts nor they care if the item has been tried on so many times and if it is the only piece left in the throughout the rest of the Quiksliver stores in Singapore) and they always smile! This is what I call a two way great shopping experience.

• The Arrogant Customer. 

This customer has the mindset that he knows everything, down to how to change the printer paper of the cash register, when it´s out of paper. I can sense an arrogant customer within a 5 meter radius. It is truly a skill you develop after a couple of years in retail. 

The arrogant customer will waltz into the store, looked around at the clothes, then calls for assistance using the index finger – mind you!. Then asked heaps of questions, followed by, telling you that the material is really actually not cotton even though it does says on the material label inside the T Shirt but then again the mindset of the customer is “Customers are always right”, then comes the sales-person-do-not-know-their-product-knowledge expression. It is not true because, the Sales Personnel is NOT agreeing on their matter-of-fact tone of voice. You feel somewhat in a debate contest with this sort of customer all the time. So to make life simple for the Sales Personnel, you just have to suck it in and say,”Yes, I agree with you that it is not made out of 100% cotton”. Like by saying this, it will change the price of pork(courtesy of my elder brother). Do you fall under this category?.

• The Pointing With Your Feet Syndrome. 

Now, this is one of the best customer that portraits the lowest level of a human being with a brain. Why I say this, is because, there is a profound meaning why humans are and still the most intelligent mammal on this face of this earth but using their feet to point to the Sales Personnel to which item he wants depicts the purpose of having a brain. For example, I worked with BÄR shoe manufaktur in a departmental store(not very glamorous) the shoes are displayed on shelves that is when “The Pointing With Your Feet Syndrome” comes out to play. 

Customer looks at a pair of shoes he is interested in which is on the last shelve below and then calls for me,the Sales Personnel, for help. I say,”Hi, can I help you?”. He says,”Yes, what size do you have in that shoe there?”. Lifts his right feet and points to the direction of the shoe he wants with the tip of his shoes. With that done, I took a deep breath and point with my thumb(the polite way of pointing)”Do you mean this sir?”. So, if the item of interest is on the top level, you lift your feet all the way up to point at it too?.  

 

Using the thumb to point.

As shown in the picture above. There was a mother and daughter incident where, the daughter was sitting with her mother,looking at some shoes. She saw a nice pair to be purchase for her dad I reckon. Then points to the shoes with her feet for the mother to see which she is referring to. Doing that to your own mother? That is plain out disgusting manners to me. Do you fall under this category? I really hope not. The lesser of you in this category,the better the world to live in without these sort of bad habits existing. 

These are some of the category I have come up with. In my next blog, I will feature even more. If you have seen absurd manners being projected at Sales Personnel, do email me. I really would like to hear someone else experience. 

 

Dignity.

From what I have noticed and experience myself after a failed attempted to resolve a problem or a request by a customer,is that customers would usually not want to understand our side(the company´s policy). Customers need to accept and bear in mind that once they step into any store, they are in “our territory”.

A customer must not have the mindset that they know every single operational system in the store they go into. In another word, “have it your way” attitude. I have come up with a couple of category to cater to different types of customer which I will go into that in my next blog entry.

The best time to witness the worst attitude of customers is the Christmas period. I bet when you read this, inside of you know you´re one of them. But I do understand nobody likes to shop in the most busiest time of the year. The lines at the cashier is extremely long, hick ups with the cash register, the line at the fitting room is long too and so on. The atmosphere is no longer “Tis the season to be jolly”.

Everything plays a huge part in the destruction of communication between customers and Sales personnel. Now, I give a real true example of phycological effect but on both sides.

Picture this; a surf shop, one week before Christmas, it was a weekend, we were making five digit total each night and it was super packed. And I mean extremely packed you have to squeeze your way through. the store isn´t that big. The lines for the fitting room was long and customers were already getting irritated at each other and so were we at them.

There was this particular family, they were using one of the fitting room for so long because each customer are allow to bring in three pieces of clothing to try on. But this family were getting clothes in and out of the fitting room and taking so much time. Thus, the rest of the customers whom were waiting in line were getting agitated. And so were the Sales personnels which included my Manager.

He did like what any Manager would do, to tell the customer who was “hogging” the fitting room. Now, what happened was. The father who´s child is “hogging” the fitting room was extremely rude and yelled at my Manager. Is is fair to you? Pain out, no! So, my Manager told him the reason why he has told him to hurry up because simply the line is getting longer and rest of the customers had been waiting. The customer yelled this,”Customers are always right!”. This is,to me, extreme display of stupidity. Look, there is a line between “Customers are always right” and Idiocy. 

If everyone, goes around having this mentality. I figure, no one is going to have a pleasant shopping experience. It is not hard at all to give the Sales Personnel the same pleasant experience you are getting from them?. Unless, your country do not practice standard Customer Service like for example Germany. Sometime back i watched a romantic movie called, “Maid Of Mahattan” and something caught my attention more than the love story that was going on. It was a quote that I will remember always and with that I end it with the quote that I can relate so much “To serve people it takes dignity and intelligences but remember there are only people with money nor though we serve them, we are not their servants”.