SQ vs. MH

Customer care agents are pretty much the main interface between a consumer related business and the consumer himself/herself. I had a first hand account of this nature recently in my communications with Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Air.

On both occasions, I had sent out an email to enquire about the frequent flyer programs. See for your self the standard of response from both airlines and you will know why MAS hasnt got what it takes to potray a professional image on the ground. I must however say that on air, i'm still favourable to our Malaysian girls over the Singapore girl.

A) Malaysia Airlines

From: Enrich [mailto:enrich@mas.com.my]

Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 11:22 AM

To: Gokula Krishnan Subramaniam (CJ/ESM)
Subject: Re: PTA claims for Points

Dear Mr Gokula

Thank you for your email.

We are sorry to advise that the refund amount cannot be converted to Enrich miles. The refund value of any ticket will be returned to the sponsor of the ticket.

We are sorry.

Kind Regards.
R Thangamalar

----- Original Message -----
From: Gokula Krishnan Subramaniam (CJ/ESM)
To: enrich@mas.com.my
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 4:27 PM
Subject: PTA claims for Points

Dear Enrich,
I'm an Enrich member, MH012443502. In one of my previous travels, I cancelled part of my itenary. As a result, MAS provided me with a PTA (Travel Refund Voucher) on 2nd Sept 2006 for approx Rm2900. As I constantly fly on business needs, I find it impossible to use these ammount for a personal travel award.
Can I convert the PTA ammount of RM2900 into Enrich Points?
Alternative, do you know if I can choose to refund the ammount in CASH?

Thank you,

Gokula Krishnan Subramaniam

Solution Architect - Competence Area Service Layer
Global Services Delivery Center (Malaysia) ERICSSON L

"Excellence is not a destination; it is a continuous journey that never ends."

B) Singapore Airlines

Our Reference No: Email/ 173407

KrisFlyer Membership Number : 8091021119

Dear Mr Subramaniam
Thank you for your feedback to KrisFlyer Membership Services received on 14 August 2007.
With regard to your query, please be advised that transfer of miles from Lufthansa's Miles and More programme into KrisFlyer Programme is subject to the approval of our partner airline. Hence, please forward your request to Lufthansa's Miles and More programme for their assistance.

We seek your kind understanding in this matter.

Mr Subramaniam, thank you once again for taking the time to write to us. Should you require further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely

Iryani Mohamed Taib

Customer Service Executive

KrisFlyer Membership Services
Hotline: (65) 6789 8188 (Singapore and other countries)

(44) 207 531 2041 (Europe)

(61) 2 9350 0203 (South West Pacific)

Facsimile: (65) 6789 8777

Website: http://www.krisflyer.com/

Singapore Airlines Limited, Co Regn No:197200078R

The quality of response speaks for itself, SIA 10, MAS 0.

Root cause analysis

You have probably done some root cause analysis to support lessons learnt upon project completions. However, RCA doesnt always have to be tied up to work or technical domains. It seems you can also resolve the human factor problems using RCA. I found this in my mail box, something from one of our country organizations, distributed to reduce work related frustrations.

Not bad i must say, RCA's put to good use. If just everyone can make good use of this process for actual work related issues!

Rome & Colloseo Visit

My trip to Rome wasn’t one that was planned. It just happened. My colleague Tock and I were en-route to Bangkok for a meeting and 2 days before we flew, we had news that there would be a strategy meeting in Rome which required our attendance. So it was pretty much a tiring week. It started of with 3 days in Bangkok, then flying back to KL for 7 hours of transit, before taking a long 15 hour flight to Rome, via Frankfurt. We finally arrived in Rome, but I couldn’t say the same for my baggage, that never made it from the very beginning of my journey in Malaysia. All this given that we checked in using Tock’s Enrich gold at the golden class lanes, 5 hours before flight.. So much for MAS’s new passenger check in system.

The colloseo at night.
Lost as usual, in yet another Kwai-lo land..
Inside the Colloseo at 12 noon.

My favourite Italian tree. Below is probably the most magnificent place in Rome, the Vatican. It is yet another wonder of true beauty, in terms of the art work, architecture, calmness and off course holiness too. Here's a view of the roman city from the observatory platform, at the top of the dome. You need to climb 300 stairs up and mind you, once you start, you cant turn back untill you reach the top. Its quiet an experiance as the stairways get smaller in size as you reach the peak.

The above 2 pictures took literally 15 minutes for me to plan, strategise and try different shots. The interior of the Cathedral is dark and i had my exposure at ISO400 with 1 sec shutter delay to get the best shots. Oh yeah, i didnt have a tripod, so i placed the camera on the guide rail and set the timer to avoid my clicking motion to induce any form of movement and distortion to the slow scenary shot of the Panasonic Lumix Fx-9. The human object in the picture isnt a Ghost but a dude on a white shirt walking pass my shot. Due to the slow shutter speed, it looks a little freaky!

Anyway, i'm very proud of these shots, given my amateur photographic skills.
to visit, i wasnt very impressed with rome. However, there seem to be some people who are and have come up with a list of 10+1 reasons to visit Rome. Go read it here.

Myself, Tock & Stephen. Wolfgang is taking the photo. These are some people i work with globally.

Windsor, the castle that still is!

John Freeman, The Royal Collection © 2006, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

I took the liberty to rip the above picture from here. It's probably the most elegant and by far the biggest royal residence in Europe. This over thousand year old fotress turned castle serves as the weekend home for the Queen & her loved ones. You can read more about Windsor here in Wikipedia, hence i dont need to cut & paste. My trip to Windsor was by luck of a misfortune. My flight from London to Gotteburg was cancelled due to the SAS strike. As a result, my only available option was to take a late evening LH flight via Frankfurt, giving me a good 8 hours of bumming around at my sisters place. As it was just 10 minutes drive away, she dropped me off one cold & rainy morning for my experiance of a lifetime. Here's some pics to share.





Okay, i wasnt flying around in a Heli to get this picture, this one is Courtesy of Wikipedia. I also owe an appology to my camera as i was constantly cursing its poor colour and over exposure. I later found out in Rome that i had set the ISO to 400 and happily shooting away in broad daylight. How goblok of me!

London

As promised, I’ll kick start a series of photog’s (Photo-blog) to share with you some of the pictures I’ve snapped over the last 2 months during my business trips. I start with my trip to the UK, end May. I was in-transit at London for 3 days, when traveling from Egypt to Sweden on business. My trip to London was originally scheduled to be for work but once I arrived, my hosts decided to go on a vacation. So, vacationing is what I did too. I wasn’t too impressed with Heathrow, which took 40 minutes to clear the 1st baggage of the BA flight I was on, CAI-LON.

It was only 3 days, but I had a fantastic time there. In fact, I can easily say I almost fell in love with London in those few days. It led me to applying for certain local jobs, while surfing some internal employment sites. Anyway, I’ll do the shutting up and let the pictures do the talking.

The london eye.

Hyde's park, the one our local Jo's plan to re-create around Mont Kiara!

Big Ben

The Big "B" Palace!

Me & Sis, at the entrance of 10 Downing street.

Salut 2007, bisoux 2006

Bonjour à tous. If theres one thing my french speaking colleagues thought me was, when asked if I could speak french, say " je parler français comme le oiseau". It means i speak french like the birds. There is something about the language that always fascinated me. What an amazing language it is, so sensual & sexy.


Anyhow, back to reality. I’m not going to cook up too many excuses for my long silence but in short, the first 6 months have been hell in Egypt. Let's not even talk about 2006, what a roller coaster year it was, with many nice people and horrible work memories in Egypt.

The project wrap up is complete, the client has gone live in May and all the project pioneers have left North Africa, perhaps for good. The last 6 months have been nothing short of a nightmare and I’ll certainly think twice working on any delivery projects for a client based in certain parts of the world where its impossible to be treated with respect, regardless if you are at right. For the purpose of safeguarding my job, i wish not to reveal which region it is.

And No, I didn’t refer to North Africa as the “taboo” region I don’t want to work with but its certainly a region not too far from there. Africa is an amazing continent, full of culture, french colonies, beaches, hash, weed..hmm... isnt it wonderfull :)

Anyway, after Egypt, I was back for a couple of weeks, then left for India for what I call the “Indian Haj”, having a jam packed week of temple visits. I then left back to Egypt for a week, then to Bangkok for a couple of days and finally to Rome for a week (almost). I also did a pit stop in London to spend some time with my sister, before returning back to Malaysia. I will photo-blog about these and many more stories in the coming days. So, stay tuned.

Meantime, i wanna share with all of you the Photo of Manish, the lovely little toddler, son of a good friend of mine from Penang, Thanesh & Nantha. I first blogged about Thana's pregnancy here and now you have Manish. I'm yet to get any pictures from Azizah & Fahmi on their little one.


Baby Manish with grandma, isnt he cute?