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Ethos Issue 4, Apr 2008
Service Beyond Excellence
Interview with Ng Hock Keong
Singapore’s Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) has won many accolades for its service excellence and innovations such as the groundbreaking my.cpf online portal. Ng Hock Keong, the Quality Service Manager (QSM) behind many of CPFB’s service initiatives, shares his views on the challenges of change in a mature service-oriented agency responsible for over three million members.
CPFB has a hard-earned reputation for being a quality service-oriented agency. What is driving it to introduce new service innovations, especially when some of these could potentially disrupt existing service experiences that are already comfortably well received?
There are two driving forces. First, it is clear to us that the customer has changed. Citizens have become savvier, and have higher expectations of government, transparency and service. What was once a delighter or performance service is now considered a basic service. Second, a public service agency providing excellent customer service brings about national goodwill; we cannot be stagnant or complacent in meeting the rising expectations of our citizens.
From an organisational perspective, why would CPFB think of some new service to delight the customer or test the market every year? I believe it is a passion of wanting to be a service excellence agency: we take pride in exceeding expectations, and surpassing other service providers, public or private. The only way to surpass other benchmark organisations is to do something that has never been done before. Two most recent examples are the "m-ambassador" and "e-concierge" services.
Public service agencies are often stereotyped as being risk-averse. Yet how does CPFB’s organisational culture support change and innovation in service delivery?
I think we have a willingness to admit imperfection and mistakes—and the ability to then build on that, to come up with a better version of ideas. This is something you do not see that often outside CPFB.
One example was the development of the initial version of our mobile services, designed for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 2006. Our target customers were not very receptive to it. So we took a step back, did a post-mortem, and moved on to a better solution today. Another project in which I was personally involved was a IT system for scanning in hardcopy correspondence. The idea was good and the system was developed with the latest technology available in 2000, but it did not take off as we wished because customer behaviour had changed by the time the system was ready, and more customers were simply writing emails to us. We eventually stopped using the system in 2003. Yet there were no repercussions on the officers involved. The experience we gained from the failure of the project helped tremendously when we developed other systems later on. The important thing was that management accepted that while the initial systems were technically up to scratch, it did not succeed operationally due to a range of other reasons, including users’ resistance to change. We learned from that episode. The core personnel of the project team were reassembled for the subsequent customer relationship management system project, which was implemented very smoothly as a result.
There are many other service innovation stories, where it is not “first version perfect”. But we have a culture where if someone is championing a project and it is not working out, they will not say “Let’s cover up” or “Let’s pretend it works”. The moment you take away the fear factor of a penalty for honest mistakes, people will be more upfront, and they will want to do better. And we are prepared to put in more resources to get it right the next time. It is very important that our top management has been so supportive of this culture of tolerating failure.
We also have an internal culture where we celebrate success and new ideas. We give out generous awards for successful new projects. And when one department tries out new ideas that work, every other department will want to come on board—the word-of-mouth effect is better than a top-down plan from the QSM office!
How has CPFB’s service model moved from pursuing cost savings and efficiency gains to one of value enhancement?
If we keep traditional service models, there is no way that we will have enough additional resources to do all these new things; you can only get incremental improvements. You can always do more with extra resources, but that is not sustainable. So first, you have to pursue the cost-saving model. Automate high volume transactions. We tackled this in 2003, by e-enabling these transactions, and began to reap raw cost savings. We cut down the number of physical counters, reserving them for those who really need them. We freed up staff to do other things, such as helping people with electronic transactions. We changed our physical layout so that the e-lobby with self-help service terminals is the first point of contact. Manned counters are still there, but with a much longer waiting time of say 60 minutes for walk-in, young and able customers. So the customer decides what he is prepared to do.
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