Tan Kin Lian's Blog: SingTel Website

Thursday, July 08, 2010

SingTel Website

I was given a mobile number in Malaysia with the number 60 107 xxx xxxx. I could not get through. I checked the Singtel website to find a number that I could call for assistance.

The "Contact Us" page in the website was not helpful. I searched the home page and clicked on a few other pages but got lost. Finally, I decided to call 100. The staff told me that I had to called 104 for assistance on International Call.

I had to pay $0.60 to get help. Singtel seemed to be keen to charge customers and earn revenue, rather than to help their customer. The staff told me how to call the number by dialing 02 and dropping the 0. Wow!!

I told her that I spent 15 minutes browsing the website, but could not get this type of information. She said that I had to go the website (http://www.singtel.com.sg/) and clicked on "large enterprise", "business", "voice and telephony", and so on. It seemed to require at least 6 page access. I gave up.

It would have been easier if the Singtel website provides their help pages that can be accessed by searching for the title, such as "Telephone call to Malaysia" or "International Telephone Call". This search is similar to the Google search, except that it is restricted to inforamtion from the corporate website. All the relevant information can be placed in one or a few pages in PDF.

The complicated website (or what someone called the "spiderweb") is not unique to Singtel. It is common with most large organisations, including government agencies. They must be designed by consultants, who make it their business to give complicated, rather than simple solutoins. This makes life stressful and a hassle for the public.

Please share your experience on using the website of large corporations here.

Tan Kin Lian

7 comments:

Anonymous said...: Most govebnment organisations no longer can ne contacted by phone to save cost. Never mind about service level.

So it looks impressive on cost ratio etc.; July 08, 2010 3:23 PM
Anonymous said...: Mr Tan,
I know exactly what you mean, because I was trying to find the right number on the same page (http://info.singtel.com/Contact-Us) last night! It's hopeless!
SC Tan; July 08, 2010 5:04 PM
Anonymous said...: Time for starhub! Starhub now got facebook fan page. They response promptly to request over there.
facebook.com/Starhub.; July 08, 2010 8:59 PM
chnrxn said...: In fact, most organizations in Singapore have bad websites (if only in my opinion) that are completely implemented in Flash and are hard to navigate.

Having information embedded in PDFs on the website is also a bad idea because it complicates search engines and take long to download.

With the rising prominence of mobile phones in web surfing, websites should also have mobile friendly versions. Two leading organizations in this area are OCBC bank and Citibank which have mobile-optimized Internet banking websites - this is highly commendable. Hope that more organizations can follow suit (and no, DBS iPhone apps don't count because they are exclusive).; July 08, 2010 11:11 PM
Anonymous said...: For Mr Tan's case, I agree that the navigation is not very straight forward and takes several steps. However, positioned at the top right is a "Search SingTel.com". There you can type "International Malaysia" and the search result does display STD020.

As for Mr SC Tan, just curious, what number are you looking for that you cant find ?; July 09, 2010 1:25 PM
Tan Kin Lian said...: Try the naviation in my prototype website. It should provide the inforamtion more easily and with less hassle.; July 09, 2010 3:05 PM
StFual said...: I used to build websites and my advice to customers was normally that people want information and most people want it on the first page. You need to determine what information your customers want . For many Singapore companies that is simply the phone number and address so that people can call or vist. Nearly all the companies i worked with wanted big flashy marketing messages (or even worse mission statements) on the first page which took a long time to load and once you had seen them once you did not want to see again.

I could never persuade people that simple and fast to load was better for most small businesses. I now measure the quality of a business website by how easy it is to find the contact information and how many clicks it takes. It should also be easy to find on a mobile device while you are travelling.

The best example in the world of simplicity is google. Google customers want to search and give you the search box straight away.; July 13, 2010 12:52 PM