Chot is presently working with Aquarius Hotel in Kuala Lumpur as a Customer Service Executive and is now seeking for other employment opportunities and boost her career to new height.
She has been invited to attend an interview with TIME Logistics, a shipping and freight forwarding company based in Petaling Jaya, Selangor. Chot is applying for a position as Senior Customer Service Officer and the interviewer, John Kapoor is the Customer Service Manager for TIME Logistics.
Below is the excerpt of the interview. More questions and answers will be added from time to time as to reflect the real interview situation, hence you may want to bookmark this page.
Interviewer: Thanks for coming for the interview. Let’s start with my first question. Can you tell me something about yourself?
Chot: Thanks for the invitation too. I was born and raised in Kuantan, Pahang, and am now staying in Ampang, KL for the past 5 years, since completing my studies. I am the youngest of the family, with 6 other older siblings.
I graduated in the field of Mass Communication from Monash University in 2002 and upon graduation I was hired as Customer Service Assistant with Aquarius Hotel, in Jalan Tun Razak, KL, the company I am working until today. I was promoted to Customer Service Executive after 2 and a half years, serving until now.
Interviewer: When you chose Mass Communication as your field of study in your Degree, what specific career that you had in mind?
Chot: I have looked into the career prospect and talked to a few people, including my parents, the university advisor and some senior friends before signing up for the course. Because of the nature of the course itself, the career prospect it offers is quite broad, in the sense that graduates in Mass Communication have more than 1 option of industry, niche and specialization to choose upon graduation.
To make my point, generally, if you study law, then you become a lawyer. And if you study medicine, you become a medical practitioner. The case is not the same with Mass Communication. While, in a nutshell the course taught the students to understand more of media and communication, it also exposed students with other important elements such as presentation & public speaking, research, documentation and people interaction.
I did not set specific profession to go with when choosing the course. However, keeping in mind that I consider myself as a people-oriented person, my career will have to do a lot with interacting with other people. And I was not disappointed with my decision to choose Customer Service as my line.
Interviewer: Tell me what are the most important criteria for someone to be a success in the customer service field.
Chot: First of all, like I have mentioned before, to start with, you need to be a people person. You must like working with people. Customer service is all about people, people and people. This may sound easy and perhaps typical to most, but I have seen for the past 5 years or so, people destroying their career because they do not have this important element that will form the backbone of their career.
A people oriented individual will have all the important elements to flourish his or her career further and these elements include compassion, empathy, the drive to make things happen, strengthening the relationship and ultimately make people feel good and happy.
A Customer Service personnel must also have a lot of patience. This line of work requires a high degree of perseverance you cannot risk employing short-fused people that might ruin relationship between you and the customers.
Interviewer: How do you handle negative feedback or complain from customers?
Chot: All remarks by the customers, be it positive or negative are treated as a closed loop feedback that will be utilized to improve the system, processes and service delivery. We make it a practice for the negative feedback to be attended on speedy basis to understand more about the circumstances that have led to customers voicing their unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
Handling and responding to customer’s negative feedback varies according to the types and circumstances. For example, a hotel guest may call the reception and angrily complain about the non-working air condition in his room. This is the type of situation needing an immediate attention.
As a Customer Service Executive, my job is to be alerted about the situation, rope in the technical assistant who will go and check the problem, resolve it and keep me informed of updated situation. Additionally I will need to ensure that the customer is happy with the solution, or otherwise implement alternative measures.
Interviewer: What do you mean by alternative measures?
Chot: We need to understand that sometimes, even after solving the customer’s problem, he or she might still not be entirely happy. In that case, we need to go the extra mile. In the circumstances we have discussed before, if the guest is still upset, I would offer a switch to a larger room, with better facilities, at no extra cost. I might also issue some generous voucher or highly discounted spa service to keep the customer happy.
Interviewer: How do you evaluate the existing system, procedure and processes in your current job? Are the systems effective and versatile enough, or did you discover any shortcoming that will improve the overall governance and processes?
Chot: I believe no system is perfect, and even if it is, it needs change and evolution to accommodate the changing world and shift in life style. And that includes the system in our company now. In fact, we have implemented a number of changes for the past few years. For instance, before the beginning of 2004, the customer service personnel only worked the normal working hours, which was from 9am to 6pm.
Beyond the 9am-6pm time frame, guest’s problem would need to be attended by ad-hoc staff working around the clock. It worked ok but it was far from perfect. Over the time, we realized the need of proper Customer Service personnel to be present due to increasing number of complaints. As such, we restructured the work schedule to have the department’s personnel working around the clock.
Interviewer: Do you believe with the notion ‘the customer is always right?’
Chot: In ideal world, this is what we want to believe. In practical world, this does not happen all the time but rather a myth. Today, we have zero accident and zero inflation campaigns which are both impossible to achieve. What I am saying here is that while we can’t 100% believe or achieve our target, it is not wrong for us to put such target or live with the principle.
This is aligned to the essence of goal setting. To achieve a certain goal, we must set a target which is one step ahead of what we can achieve so that we work harder towards our goal.
Interviewer: Nicely said. Are you overseeing or supervising any subordinate at the moment?
Chot: Yes. At the moment, I have one Junior Customer Service Officer reporting directly to me. Additionally, I have one Administrator who assists me with my daily routine such as report preparation and documentation, scheduling, consolidation of customer’s feedback and so on. This administrator also reports to me.
Interviewer: Currently you are working in the hotel industry, while our company is in logistics, shipping and freight forwarding. The two are quite distinguished sectors and industries, you know. How do you feel the suitability of you jumping from one industry to another? In other words, what makes you think you can be a success here?
Chot: I would look at this as an opportunity rather than a problem or issue. I mean when you stay in a particular industry and look at matters from the same perspective over and over, chances are you may miss one particular point that could change the entire landscape as well as results. It’s kind of situation “looking but failing to see”.
This also explains why I do not put hotel industry as part of my requirement when I move on with my career, for as long as I can stay in customer service line. After all, the customer service can also be considered an industry by itself. This works both ways, which means that it benefits both me and you. By keeping my options open, I know I open up more opportunities to grow myself.
Interviewer: Commuting from Ampang to Jalan Tun Razak is not much of a problem, as the places are not very far from each other. If you work here, it means you have to drive all the way from your place to PJ every day. This sounds like a pretty much a big deal, don’t you think?
Chot: If I were to work here, I can assure you that traveling is the least I and you should worry about. Living in the city for many years has taught me well how to assimilate my life here with traveling and traffic part – it is part and parcel of life here. I believe the real challenge starts when you arrive at work, and not during the journey.
Interviewer: Fair enough. Ok, I think that should be all of my questions now. Before we wrap up, do you have any question for me?
Chot: Yes, I do. Can you explain to me a little bit about the structure of the Customer Service department here?
Interviewer: Sure. Overall, the department itself is quite big, with more than 40 Customer Service personnel employed to date, but when we consider that our branches are scattered around the country, each branch has an approximately equal number, between 3-4 people, with the exception to this office here, which is our country HQ. Here we have 7 people making up the department, including me.
The department is also undergoing growth and expansion, just like our business as we are opening more and more offices. Earlier this year, we only have about 25 executives, and now over 40. I am currently overseeing this 40 personnel and I will need a senior executive to assist me with the operation.
Chot: So the position has been vacant for how long?
Interviewer: This is a newly created position, which gained approval sometime a month back.
Chot: I see. Thank you. So what would be the immediate task that this new person would do upon coming on board?
Interviewer: Firstly, what I would like to do when the person is on board is to bring him or her to visit all the branches, meeting the junior executives and other team members. The person will be also be tasked to look at the current system and procedures that we have, study, evaluate and assess and then present the finding to me.
Your main challenge here, I mean, if you do work here, is to optimize the resources that we have, maintain the current headcount and institute a set of measurable Key Performance Indicators or KPIs for the staff to work on. We currently work based on certain KPIs but still, they need some review and I will do that together with the new person who come on board for this position.
Additionally, you will be partnered with the Training personnel to go through our current training materials and develop and improve our training which can produce more competent staff.
Chot: Thank you. I think that’s all my questions for now.
Interviewer: In this case, thank you very much. Just to let you know the recruitment drive for this position may take up to 2 weeks. If we would like to offer you with the job, I will contact you within this period, or hopefully earlier. Otherwise, you can keep in touch with me through my contact number. Here is my business card.
Chot: Thank you very much. Yes, I do hope to talk to you again in the future. Let’s keep in touch.
