Customer Service

[PeteC]

....Good luck with that. I sent them an email about a year ago inquiring about solar yard lighting and never got an answer.

Above from the "Solar" thread.

That problem seems to be chronic everywhere here. I think another company in HH was put into the same boat a few weeks back.

If an expat is the boss, he/she should insist on seeing all the email communications on a daily basis. The problem may very well stem from assigning a Thai clerk to administer email and they simply forget, or get lazy, to answer or pass it on within the office. How do the expat bosses on here organize it?

Also a good chance on here now to voice opinions about other customer service problems experienced anywhere.

My most recent one was with Toyota, Rayong. The service clerk thought appropriate to write up what she wanted done to my truck rather than what I told her I wanted done. My wife was there and when she started to explain to her in Thai, the woman said "I can understand English..." My wife smiled and walked a safe distance away so as not to be hit by the explosion. The woman handed me the work order to be signed, I ripped it up and went to the service manager and started all over again. In closing, my wife told him in Thai with the woman standing there, "With all the economic problems and unemployment here, you would think Toyota could hire competent staff...". Pete

[lomuamart]

It must be something to do with the heat.
I reckon that about this time of the year everyone goes a bit crazy. Customer service? Where are the customers? And if any are present then it's too hot to do anything between 9am and 5pm.

[PeteC]

Yes, very true Lomu and could be a symptom. However, if the government wants to play hardball in a commercial sense with the developed world, "It's the Thai way..." doesn't hack it anymore as an excuse. If they want to wither on the vine and continue to drop in ranking in Asia, they're going about it in the correct way.

It's all in the hands of the big guys. As we know, when they say 'jump' the people will (or did), and change almost overnight.

I see obstruction to change now in a very big way, and have since Thaksin left. Pete

[hhfarang]

Above from the "Solar" thread.

The sad part about that one Pete is that I emailed the company specifically because I used to hang out at a bar in Takiab and met the owner or one of the owners of that company and talked to him several times about their lights. I finally decided to have a look with the intention of buying some sidewalk lighting and sent the email per the "contact us" selection on their web site and got no reply.

At that point I just wrote off the company. If they can't even be bothered to answer their emails for sales then what is their after sales customer service like? I sent two emails by the way just to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[margaretcarnes]

I'm afraid poor customer service isn't just found in Thailand these days.
The UK must be amongst one of the worst places for getting replies to e mails, and particularly for getting through to the relevant people by phone.
Given we have the advantage here of (usually) speaking the same language the level of incompetence is unbelievable sometimes.
At least in LOS we can cite language and culture differences. I'm currently waiting for e mail replies on 3 seperate matters from my local Council, my Union, and the Trademark people. All have acknowledged my queries, and all were over 4 months ago.
In addition I have now waited 2 years for a decision from the Revenue on a tax issue, and 3 years for a Tax Credit decision.
In February an online order from a well known craft supplier took 6 weeks and several e mails to sort out.
Any problems which require phone calls are a nightmare, and so expensive due to interminable queues that most people just give up. Today I did get through to Warm Front by phone quite quickly, but the lady asked for my house number 3 times during the conversation. In fact sometimes I wonder if I'm actually speaking English at all!
I was taught from day 1 at work to always jot down details while dealing with phone enquiries, and still do, even when that information may need to be input to a computer anyway. Seems now that people don't use pen, paper, or brain, and just follow a computer script mindlessly. Sorry. Rant over!

[PET]

Well said Margaret and so say all of us.

The gross incompetence around when job losses are climbing is just astounding.

I also feel better for the rant.

[margaretcarnes]

Agreed PET. I do understand that when living in LOS it is so easy to lose track of what is going on back home. Been there. Got the T shirt. In LOS you become used to usually getting very good service. Whether in shops, restaurants, or even at Immigration offices. Quite honestly poor service is rare compared with the standards back home, and people do tend to forget.
A good example I think is going back to England and finding that you can't just buy a fridge and go home with it straight away in the back of a pickup. Oh no no no. You have to arrange a delivery date then wait home all day in the unlikely event that it might just arrive.
Then you arrange for your mains services. In HH you can pop along to the electricity office if there is a problem. In England you don't even know where the office IS anymore!

[Roel]

margaretcarnes wrote:

In England you don't even know where the office IS anymore!

Indeed mags: could be Bangalore, Karachi, Dhaka, anywhere

But seriously. My advice is to NOT rely on email for communications with whatever Thai business unless you got a business card with a specific direct email address from that person (and even then). Forget all these info@blablala addresses. Reason for no reply is that they simply do not understand your email and if they do they do not have the confidence to answer you in English. Simple as that.

prcscct wrote:

With all the economic problems and unemployment here, you would think Toyota could hire competent staff...

False. Very hard to find competent English speaking staff. People with these qualifications tend to go to Bangkok where they get better salaries. Solution: Toyota could offers better salaries. But they wont because 99% of the time this girl will deal with Thai customers. Why pay more salary because the odd farang walks in every now and then, most of the time accompanied by a Thai partner anyway.

prcscct wrote:

The woman handed me the work order to be signed, I ripped it up

I guess you went in there to get your car fixed, not to make friends. Maybe her English was poor but from my experience in Thailand I am pretty sure that she was only trying to be helpful.

[playboy]

Well said Roel...

[PeteC]

You're missing the point Roel, I guess I wasn't clear enough.

1) The girl was not competent in English although insisting she was. I didn't need her to be as my wife was there to explain things, and she was rudely dismissed.
2) The comment my wife made to the service manager was in Thai, to a Thai and about a Thai.
3) The woman insisted on repeating a service performed 6 months earlier as evidenced by the paperwork we showed to her. She couldn't grasp the concept of "kilometers OR time", and still couldn't in the managers office when even he started to explain it to her.

This has nothing to do with English, farangs or making friends. It has to do with very poor customer service regardless of who the customer was. Pete

[The understudy]

Yes, very true Lomu and could be a symptom. However, if the government wants to play hardball in a commercial sense with the developed world, "It's the Thai way..." doesn't hack it anymore as an excuse. If they want to wither on the vine and continue to drop in ranking in Asia, they're going about it in the correct way.

It's all in the hands of the big guys. As we know, when they say 'jump' the people will (or did), and change almost overnight.

I see obstruction to change now in a very big way, and have since Thaksin left. Pete

Poeple in Thailand don't like changes Pete and that goues all the way from Top to bottom and vice versa.

Including customer service. leave it as is is the general Motto in Thai working community. than if change comes it comes in a real an sudden way. So People will be forced to changed...

As A Thai myself I simply don't understand why Thai's cannot change little by little, this way is practiced out everywhere els in the world but instead someone has to come iand make changes by force in order for Thais to get it.
Pete you are absolutely right the worn out excuse "It's the Thai way" simply don't cut it anymore.

I recall the Hookline from Micheal Jackson's "Man in the Mirror"

"Im starting with the man in the mirror,
I asked him if you changed his ways,
Yet no massage coudln't been any clearer
IF you wanna make the world a better place
take a look of youself and make that Change!"

But unfortunately thai Thai Mirror is to blurred for them to see that they have to change!

Your's The understudy!

[Roel]

I do not think I missed the point: you experienced bad customer service and I certainly believe you did. But my point is that your reaction was over the top no matter the circumstances and this is exactly what feeds stereotypes of farangs all being short tempered, rude. aggresive etc.

From what I read and know all long term expats agree that when you visit Immigration you should smile a lot, be patient, well mannered and polite no matter what happens and how long it takes. Why should this not apply to a Toyota office girl?

[margaretcarnes]

Yes Pete - Roel has made some valid points IMO, but maybe the girl simply hadn't received enough training and couldn't risk losing face. Because that's the top and bottom of a lot of the problems we, as farangs, experience in LOS. Even your wife experienced the same in this case. Maybe because the girl couldn't lose face in front of her boss either?
Understudy appreciates the problems inherent with Thai business and culture clashes, and hopes to see change. But with respect Understudy, you have seen much more of Western ways than many Thais, and are quite rare in comparing your home country unfavourably with the West.
Usually farangs just shrug, smile, and accept things as they are. Admittedly sometimes it all gets a bit too much, and then the best thing to do IMO is to wander outside for a cig and chill!
Change isn't always for the better, especially if it is introduced too quickly and goes against deeply ingrained value and belief systems.

(Jeez where did that come from? Its 30 years since I did Sociology!)

[robby hh]

Certainly not confined to TL or the UK.

Sent an email to the Thai Embassy in NZ about a month ago, no reply.

Moved house recently and sent a change of address email to all my contacte including a NZ finance company I have some money with, got a letter from said finance company last week thanking me for notifying the address change, sent of course to the old address????

[Wanderlust]

Above from the "Solar" thread.

The sad part about that one Pete is that I emailed the company specifically because I used to hang out at a bar in Takiab and met the owner or one of the owners of that company and talked to him several times about their lights. I finally decided to have a look with the intention of buying some sidewalk lighting and sent the email per the "contact us" selection on their web site and got no reply.

At that point I just wrote off the company. If they can't even be bothered to answer their emails for sales then what is their after sales customer service like? I sent two emails by the way just to give them the benefit of the doubt.

hhf,
Sorry a bit late to this thread as I was away when it started. Have you considered the possibilities as follows;
(i)Your emails never arrived;
(ii) Your emails arrived but their replies didn't;
(iii) Your emails arrived and their replies went into your email providers junk folder;
(iv) Your emails arrived and their replies went into your own junk folder (if you use a mail program);
(vi) A combination of any two of the above.

I don't know if you are aware but certain email providers regularly block email coming from Thailand, and these include AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail; if you use one of them then it is a good chance that is what has happened; it happens on HHAD all the time and warnings have been posted by Lev and buksida about this. There is a thread http://www.huahinafterdark.com/forum/th ... t2614.html which refers to this, although the thread itself is about something else tech and email related.
Please don't write a business off on the basis of two emails not replied to, as it may not be their fault at all that you didn't get a reply.