A Christmas Shopping Experience, Singaporean style.

Singapore is a land of great shops...but is it a land of great shopping experiences?

Not necessarily.

Last week, I wanted to buy a book. This should be a simple matter since bookshops exist for that purpose. However, in Singapore, bookshops don't seem to know what they exist for.

I found the book on the very helpful Kinokuniya website and called them to reserve a copy. This didn't go as planned. The girl who answered the phone asked me to hold on while she tried to put me through to the right person...and so I held and held and held. Finally, she came back to me and said that the person was engaged...could she get them to call back?

"No. It is OK. No-one will ever call back anyway." I declined, quite rightly, since in Singapore I have never managed to get a call back from any shop I have dealt with. They don't provide that level of service or courtesy. They do, however, sometimes take your phone number, then let you wait for the call which never comes.

Instead, I went to the shop the following day, to get the book which I knew they had in stock.

My luck was not in. The only copy had sold that very morning. A quiet word with the information desk informed me that there was not another copy in any Kinokuniya store - but that they could order one for me in "six to eight weeks".

I did think it strange that an important book by a well known American thinker should only have one copy in stock in all Kinokuniya's bookstores.

She suggested I tried Borders.

I did. They didn't have it either but could get it in "four to six weeks".

I called Times Bookshop - but none of their stores stocked it, either. They didn't offer to order it.

I tried to call Popular bookstore's flagship shop in Bras Brasah - and here is where it gets interesting. The phone was engaged for about half-an-hour, before I could get it to ring. When it did ring, it was answered after a very long time, and immediately put on hold. No-one spoke to me. Then after about thirty seconds, they picked the phone up and immediately put the phone down, disconnecting the call.

I called again. They answered again, put me on hold, picked the phone up and disconnected me again.

Just for a laugh, I tried again, twice more in the next hour. The same thing was done to me on both occasions.

I tried calling the following day. No-one answered at all.

This is what I call "The Singapore Standard of Customer Service"...it is a Standard, because it is very common here. Many people in service jobs don't know that their job is to help people. They see it more as a means to a social life and pose around their shops and have vacuous conversations with each other (while keeping the customers waiting). When asked a direct question by a customer most customer service staff in Singapore will not know the answer. Many of them will not even speak any English. It is just ludicrous, at times, how difficult it is to get basic service, here.

The only reason I think that Singaporeans tolerate this, is that they are used to it. They cannot see that it is unusual because they do not have enough experience of the customer service standards in many other countries, to know that service is usually much better elsewhere.

So far, in my book hunt, I have learnt that there was only ONE copy of the book in the whole of Singapore, when my quest began. I missed that one copy by an hour or two. I have been unable to locate another copy. The only possibility is Popular bookstore, which, for all I know might have a hundred copies...but no-one there wants to let me know, because I have been unable to speak to any of their staff on the phone, despite repeated calls.

Eventually, I had to give up on buying the book, just now.

I am left with the feeling that a lot of recorded knowledge (that is, in the form of books) is not so readily available in Singapore. The bookshops here, are not very well stocked (too few copies of too few books, except for a few heavily promoted "leaders") - and there is no Amazon alternative (I have never been allowed, by Amazon, to ship to Singapore). I wonder, therefore, at how much Singaporeans never get to know, because they don't get the chance to read about it.

Of course, there is a natural limitation on the size and number of bookshops that Singapore can support. It is a small city, which probably precludes the presence of truly comprehensive bookstores (have you seen how small Borders is, for instance?). If Singaporeans don't buy books in sufficient numbers, it means that bookstores can't grow big enough to stock the widest range (in more than one copy, so there aren't two month ordering waits for one). So, I suppose, in a sense, the book situation is self-inflicted: there can't be enough people buying enough books, to support a truly comprehensive range of bookstores.

That being said, Kinokuniya comes closest to stocking a wide range of books. I just wish they had more than one copy of many of them.

On the book front, Singapore has one saving grace, of course: the library system (which is much better than the bookstore situation...perhaps one has ruined the other.)

Back to the main point of my post. Shopping should not be a difficult experience. Customer service staff, should, actually, provide good customer service. The answering of phones politely, promptly and helpfully is part of offering that service. No-one should have to make dozens of calls with no result. That one person has experienced this, indicates that most are likely to (for my calls were at random times). If that is so, then Singapore's retailers have a problem that they really must make an effort to solve. Customer service as bad as what I experienced with Popular is a public relations disaster: it breeds ill-feeling in customers and leads to a reduction in turnover. When it is as difficult to get information, as it was with Popular, customers will simply go elsewhere...perhaps permanently. After all, should retailers really be putting the phone down on customers, without speaking? Perhaps, unlike most industries, there is no recession for the book market and they don't need another sale...from the way they behave, one would think their business was to hoard books, not sell them. What a bizarre country this can be, at times.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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