During the past festive week in Malaysia, I experienced a week-long of slow and/or non-connectivity from my broadband service provider - CELCOM. I spoke to its Customer Care reps five times and was utterly dismayed by their responses and logic every time. I discovered that the reps will always try to pin the blame on me first before admitting to anything else - like if my modem settings were off or my laptop was in someway dysfunctional. Finally, one of them confessed that the slow connection was due to high connectivity traffic. So due to their inadequate infrastructure to handle the high connnectivity volume during public holidays, customers like me had to suffer. But think about it - it's not my problem. You fixed the subscription rate and I had no say in it. So why should I care now that you cannot fulfill customer requirements? And Celcom does not offer any apologies nor rebates to show their empathy towards its customers. This is a classic example of how a business is not managing its customer satisfaction levels well. I am scouting around for an alternative broadband service provider and I am sure that thousands of other subscribers are doing the same thing right this minute.

Now if the ISO 9001 QMS was in place and implemented effectively, a viable solution would have been identified and necessary actions would have been planned out and implemented. Additional capital expenditure would certainly induce commercial sustainability and growth over the longer term. If businesses keep going for the short term profits by promising empty promises that they actually plan not to deliver, sooner or later the red ink will show up on their financial reports. A lesson in the history of business failures is always good for the management.