Put People First

I hope that our business policies are made on the concept of "put people first", rather than "make more profit".

By putting people first, the business can still earn a good profit margin. They will get the loyalty of their customers.

Some businesses make more profit by overcharging customers or degrade the service to customers. They may reduce their expenses, but they add more cost to the customers. Some examples are:

1. SMRT reduces the number of trains during off-peak hours. The commuters have to wait longer for a train. The train will be nearly fully packed, even during the off-peak period. By adding more train, SMRT will increase its cost marginally, but it will improve the comfort level of the commuters significantly.

2. Businesses make customers waste a lot of time in navigating through their automated call center systems. It reduces the expenses to the businesses marginally, but add a lot of wasted time and telephone bills for the customers.

3. Businesses make customers wait a long time at their customer service counters. If they increase the manpower to serve customers, they may increase their cost marginally, but reduce the waiting time for customers. Wasted time is costly to customers.

If there is genuine competition, businesses will put their best effort to "put people first", so that they win over the loyalty of their customers. Unfortunately, in Singapore, many businesses are operated by near monopolies. In competitive situations, these businesses apply unfair methods to lock their customers into term contracts and then treat the customers badly during the lock-in period.

I hope that there is a stronger voice to speak for the consumers in Singapore.