It's not about skills, it's about mindset and experience

Singapore has lost more ground in the annual Customer Satisfaction Index, dropping to 67.8 out of 100 points, from 68.7 point in 2007. This should come as no surprise to people living in Singapore; the general consensus is that we have a lot to improve when it comes to providing good customer service. For a service- and export-oriented economy, Singapore is a disappointment on that front.

What is also disappointing is the conclusion made by Mr Lee Yi Shyan, our Minister of State for Trade and Industry. The last sentence of the article, which states "Mr Lee encouraged industry leaders to take 'training and upskilling' seriously.", has shown that he has completely missed the point, and do not understand what 'customer service' or 'client satisfaction' means. For a PAP guy, I'm not surprised by this either.

The point is simple. It takes more than skills to make a client happy; it takes a mindset, a commitment to that mindset, and attitude to provide an 'experience' for the client or customer. No amount of "training and upskilling" can do that without breeding a passion and commitment to that. Much like teaching creative thinking in schools, this pretty much has fail written all over it, unless people understand why customer service is an experience, and not a commodity. It's not really hard, we just have to ask ourselves what we expect, and then try to match or exceed that expectation. No NASA scientists required to figure that out.

The following TED talk breaks it down very nicely. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Edit: My memory needs work. Thanks to @angryangmo for the ST article.

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