Lost of Ezlink Card and Customer service Officers

My Ezlink card (a card used when travelling on public transport in Singapore) was apparently stolen, by some bugger who took it while i fall asleep in the bus.

If you are the fellow take stole this and is reading this, quickly spend the money before the card is banned.

I tried to cancel the card with the MRT train station officer, and i got some interesting replies

Me : Hi, i wish to cancel my ezlink card

Officer :You have to take your ezlink card to the machine and do XXXXX transaction

Me : My card was lost apparently, (if not i will not approach you)

O : Cancellation cannot be done here, you have to call a hotline

Me : What the number? I wish to call now

O : XXXXXXXXX, you cant call now, its is only available during working hours

Me : (Why called a hotline then) thanks

the words in the brackets are my thoughts, not spoken to her, of course!

Part of the conversation was forgotten and was edited by me, but that was how the conversation flows.

Rather than approach Customer Service Officers, most of the time i prefer signs and boards unless i can. Why? The answers given by CSO are pre written. No matter how the questions are phrased, the answers are usually uniform, word by word. And the replies are as standard as the signboards or helpbook.

They are just afraid of making mistakes and offending the customers. And if they offended the customer, this leads to complaints. Singaporeans are marvellous at complaining. And complains = poor service = lesser promotion chance = superior feel that the CSO cannot perform at work.

Well, that the singapore lifestyle. Maybe for other parts of the world, i believe they might face the same issue as well.

Previously, i had a short period where i was working as the technical officer whenever the technical guy is out station, and not wanting to provide additional services and lease offending customers. I gave the "standard" answers as well!

There is a chinese saying, 多做多错，少做少错，which means, the more you do, the more errors you will encounter, the less you do, the less error you will encounter. Meaning, by providing additional services, you are risking yourself to even more mistakes. And more mistakes? Leads to more complains!

Looks like i sidetracked pretty much! From an Ezlink card, it became CSO related issues.

From my humble opinion, each store or location should have an FAQ book. So that whenever we asked any questions to ask, the CSO could flip to the page where the answer is and show to us.

By not speaking, this greatly reduce their chance to incur complains. And since their replies are as standard as robots, a black and white book with no variation in wordings serve the purpose perfectly well.