Tea with Matt: First hand experience with an earthquake.

Chengdu is a big city with about 7 million inhabitants within the municipality and another 7 million in the region surrounding the city. It appears like Singapore with skyscrapers and many shopping malls.

There are two MRT lines and it is still expanding. Cars are choke a block and traffic jams are common. Luxurious cars like Maybach, Rolls-Royce and Bentleys are a common sight. Needless to say, luxurious goods like Rolex and Ferragamo have a presence too. Fast food chains are ever present.

The most popular brands of merchandise are present and the latest fashions are available. Isetan and Parkson have stores there. There were numerous Uniqlo and G2000 stores.

The shopping malls are crowded on weekends. So too are the tourist attractions but more with locals rather than foreigners. The city is vibrant.

I was preparing to go for breakfast on Saturday morning and while chatting with my business partner, we felt a slight tremor. Nothing major and we knew immediately that it was an earthquake. Less than 30 seconds later, there was a violent tremor, shaking the whole hotel. There is not mistaking it for a major earthquake. It felt as if the hotel will collapse anytime. Both of us ran out of the hotel and we were lucky to be staying on level three of the hotel. We ran past a lady, who appeared to be in the middle of a shower moments ago, wrapping herself only in a towel, running down the stairs with us. Many others were in their pyjamas. None of us knew where the epicentre was and hope that it was not Chengdu itself.

When we were outside the hotel carpark with the other guests, I realised that I was barefoot and my business partner was wearing those thin slippers provided by the hotel. After a few minutes when there were no more tremors, I decided to run back to my room to get my shoes and at the same time grabbed my business partner’s shoes as well. But after another ten minutes of waiting, most of us returned to our rooms and switched on the television for more news.

The foreign news agencies were the first to report the quake, quoting the US Geological Service. It would be hours before the first live report came from the city of Ya’an, the epicentre of the earthquake.

Tea with Matt: Customer service quality of two insurance companies.

This is the second article contributed by a reader, Matt, who used to be the owner of an SME.

As many of us probably have whole life insurance policies, Matt's recent experience is of interest to us. Well, it is definitely of interest to me since I have one policy from AIA and one from Prudential. The former was bought some 16 years ago while the latter was bought some 25 years ago. There will come a day when I will have to surrender them.

As Matt did not reveal the names of the two companies, we can only wonder at their true identities. Go ahead and read about his experience and, perhaps, try guessing which two companies he visited.

Recently, I terminated two Whole Life Insurance policies after having paid the premiums for 20 years. As is the same for most of us, the original agent who serviced me then was no longer in the business and it was practically left to me to speak and deal directly with the companies. That was when the level of customer service I received was a revelation. Let’s just name the companies A and B.

Company A

I called up the agent who was listed as the agent servicing me to enquire how I should go about terminating the policy. The disinterest was felt from the way the answers were given. Of course she probably did not receive any commission from my policy after 20 years but to her credit, she sent the form to me a week later. I asked whether I should send the forms back to her and she encouraged me to go to the office directly so as to get the money faster.

Fine, I did that and submitted the form with the original policy at the concierge counter. A lady at the counter took the form and original policy from me after looking through. I enquired how long it would take to process the documents. "Oh, we will call you" was all that she answered. I thought, "They are an MNC. Surely, they will call me."

Ten days later, there was still no phone call from the company and I thought it was strange to take so long to process the documents. So I went back to the company and asked for an update. I was given a queue number and directed to see a CSO. She checked my IC and told me that I had missed out submitting a form. She printed the letter and showed it to me.

 

The letter was dated one day after I submitted the document. I told her I did not receive the letter. The initial response was, maybe, it was the postal service’s mistake. She promptly printed another set of forms and got me to sign them.

 

My signature was compared to the one I had used in the original policy. She told me that there was a slight difference in my signatures. Of course there was, signatures could have changed in 20 years, whaaat (Singlish)!

 

She asked me to try and sign as similarly to the original as possible or else the auditors might question them on the discrepancy. Huh? Anyway, not wanting to give her a hard time, I tried my best to reproduce my signature used 20 years ago.

Then, I was told that the cheque should be ready the next day. Not wanting to take a second chance of not receiving the cheque, I told her that I will personally collect the cheque two days later. The very next day, lo and behold, the letter which was supposedly sent to me was in my mailbox, a full 2 weeks from the date it was supposed to have been sent.

Not wanting to jump to conclusion, when I went to collect the cheque, I took the letter and asked the CSO who served me earlier and asked her whether she initiated the sending of the letter after I told her I had not received the letter. She said that she did not. So it was not the postal service’s fault after all!

This episode set me thinking on the deficiencies of the customer service in this company :

• When forms are handed in, no acknowledgement or reference number was given to confirm that documents were received. I did not think of this earlier but after going back home after submitting the documents, my wife asked me whether I had asked them for an acknowledgement. I told her that they are a MNC and should have a system. She looked at me incredulously and told me that I should always ask for an acknowledgement, MNC or SME, especially when handing over original documents.

 

• Why did the letter that I was supposed to received the next day after handing over the documents reach me 2 weeks later? Compounding the effect was the fact that the agent did not send me the form and the concierge did not spot it as well when she checked my documents at the point of submission. Come to think of it, their premium due notices also reached me after the due date. I told the CSO that there must be something wrong with the way and timing of the company’s letters being sent out.

 

• Only the cheque was given without any other documentation such as a copy of the termination submission form.

 

Company B

On the day I went to seek an update on the status of the termination at company A, I also went to company B to submit a termination notice. I was all prepared to demand that they handle my submission properly and promptly as well. What a surprise and a refreshing reception I received when I was at the front desk.

Within 2 minutes, I was sitting in front of a CSO who went through the details with me and explained what the process entails. She filled up my forms and got me to sign the documents. I asked her whether my signature is different from the original policy. Her answer was that it did not matter. She had prepared a form for me to sign that declares that my signature is as the current one.

 

Next, she offered to deposit the cheque for me into my bank account so that it would be banked in as soon as the cheque was issued that afternoon. All I had to do was just to sign a form confirming my bank and account number.

 

She also offered to send me a copy of the documents once the cheque was out. That afternoon, the cheque was deposited into my bank account and the very next day, I received a mailed copy of the documents as well as a copy of the cheque and deposit slip!

Two days later when I went to collect the cheque from company A, my wife came along and we went over to company B to enquire on her policy. The front staff checked her IC and told her on the spot what the surrender value was without having to even see a CSO and it took less than 1 minute. My wife was impressed, especially after the service I had received at company A.

Was it a coincidence that company B’s policy performed a lot better than company A, monetarily wise, at least as far as my policies were concerned? I am comparing apple to apple here since both policies had the same insurance coverage face value and were bought within one month of each other twenty years ago.

Needless to say, I filled up a customer service form and gave the CSO an excellent rating. I normally would decline to fill up such forms.

 

Related post:

Inflation adjusted retirement income plan.

Tea with Matt: Career path.

This article is contributed by a reader, Matt, who used to be the owner of an SME. Older readers might find themselves nodding their heads as they read the article while much younger readers might be somewhat incredulous. The article is as much an observation about life as it is a piece of good advice to anyone still in school or about to join the workforce. 

For most people, pursuing their passion is a luxury and if at the same time they can make a living out of it would truly be rare indeed. In our younger days, when we did not have to worry about earning a living, we were mostly idealistic. Many would project what they would be doing and earning when they graduate.

Reality sets in when we secure our first job and have to go through the grind day in and day out. Many begin to wonder what happened to all the good life graduates are entitled to after studying for so many years. Aren’t graduates supposed to be doing better than the average Joe ? Welcome to the real world where opportunities do not distinguish between the level of education you have gone through. Otherwise, the Forbes list of richest people in the world would all have Ph Ds.

 

Life is straight forward. If you cannot get the job that you love, then you better learn to love the job that you have. Otherwise, you will go through life miserably if you have to do the job for years to come. Learn more about the job and how you can do it better. Improve your skills so that you can move higher in the hierarchy and hopefully be paid more.

 

Meeting up twenty years later with my cohort from university showed a diversity of careers and success stories. The ones with better results, First Class Honours, were mostly in the academic field as most went for their Ph Ds. The surprising lot were those who were very active in ECAs and most had general passes but still graduated and are doing well in business. These were the bunch the rest of the class thought were wasting their time doing everything else except study. Looking at them now, their time spent in ECA did a lot of good in helping them to build up their skills in networking as well as to organise activities and developing their people skills.

 

During my time, we worked hard and proved that we could perform before the company paid us more. But increasingly, the attitude is pay me more, then I will work harder. In times of labour shortage, it may work. To compete, you have to show why you are better than the next person who is vying for the same job. It is only going to get more difficult with competition coming from all over. You would need to distinguish yourself from the crowd. Make yourself indispensable to your company. Make sure they feel a vacuum when you are not around. I can almost hear someone say, “Ya, right, easier said then done.” If it is that easy, then it would have been done by everyone and would not be special anymore. But how to do it?

 

Analyse your work environment. Volunteer to take up more responsibilities. Get to know the company’s operations and look for weaknesses and how to improve them. Network with peers in the same industry. Get yourself known by them. You have to be outstanding to be noticed, be it technical skills, organizational skills, knowledge of the industry etc. The ways are endless. You would need to tailor it to your own situation.

Read other guest blogs:

1. Tea with EY: Money talk, money laugh!
2. Tea with Skipper: How much is sufficient to stop full time employment?