Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Improve online service

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Improve online service

I wish to quote this real life example for government agencies to improve their online service. Although this case involves the CPF board, the same type of situation occurs with other big organisations.

I wanted to top up the special account for my wife. I had to go through the spider-web of the CPF board. I finally managed to submit an online application.

I did not receive any news for 1 week. I did not know if anyone is responding to my application and how I would be informed. I sent a follow up enquiry. I managed to get an approval a few days later. I send the top up amount by cheque to CPF board.

I received a communication that my cheque was received after the expiry of the approval. They gave me only 5 days to respond. I had to submit a new application.

Surely the CPF board knows that it would take a few days for a person to prepare and mail the cheque and for their big organisation to open the letter? Five days is far too short. Even if the approval has expired, there has been no change to the application, and there is no need to ask the member to submit a new application - which is a lot of hassle to go through their spider web.

Perhaps the CPF board is not aware that their members have many other things to attend to, and that the cannot spend a lot of time to meet their bureaucratic and unreasonable process.

I find the CPF board to be quite helpful and responsive on many matters, so this is an exception. Furthermore, this type of inconsiderate approach is quite applicable in many large organisations (and is not confined only to CPF). We need a process in Singapore for the people who designs websites and online applications to be more responsive to feedback and to make things simple for the public.

Tan Kin Lian

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Hello Mr. Tan
this is common in especially CPF board.
Personally, I have encounter twice with their so call first class customter service.

Recently, I applied for HPS, and my first application was reject due to some missing medical doc, well I understand and quickly follow up in the next few days to submit my medical doc, but I was ask to re-submit the whole application again which will have another 4 weeks of time wasted.

I called them and ask why they can't process with my updated doc, the standard answer is " as per procedure, you have to re submit everything again.

I asked for escalation to their superior and question them about such inefficent and time wasting procedure? they could not gave me a reasonable explanation and finally agreed to process my case wihtout resubmitting everything again.
Well, everything procees in the next one week.

Back in 2005, when my father passed away, and I made an application with all the require document to withdraw my father's balanced sum in his CPF.

Guess how long it took? more than 3 months after I called them and push hard on them, their standard explantion again, we have to go according to procedure here and there...
If I have not push them hard and escalate, I am not sure how long this world class service will take.

The solutions to deal with these case is to push hard on them even at the first attempt.; March 30, 2010 2:49 PM
Anonymous said...: "...I did not receive any news for 1 week. I did not know if anyone is responding to my application and how I would be informed. I sent a follow up enquiry. I managed to get an approval a few days later..."

-I would not be surprised that it was your follow up enquiry that actually alerted cpf to your online application. Usually, someone is assigned to attend/check on such online applications. However, when the application usage is extremely low or nil for sometime, that person will slack and then completely forgot that such an application exist.

"...Surely the CPF board knows that it would take a few days for a person to prepare and mail the cheque and for their big organisation to open the letter? Five days is far too short..."

- for big organisations in Singapore be it government or private, the services render does not come from the customer perspective. Usually, it is more from the process perspective.

Merlion; March 30, 2010 3:22 PM
Anonymous said...: Big organization relies on auto-reply message. I had problem with Aviva customer service too. I'm not sure the slow response is due to the staff not possessing the appropriate knowledge or they have too many enquries to handle? But even if this is the case, the organization itself should solve this problem by hiring and training the staffs & not just ignore the clients. Nowadays, my theory is; the less service you subscribe to, the less problem you have.; March 30, 2010 4:06 PM