Mr Lee Yi Shyan at the Customer-Centric Initiative Learning Journey at VivoCity, 25 Apr 2011

Mr Chang Yeng Cheong, General Manager, Maple Tree Investments Pte Ltd,

Tenants and Partners of Vivo City,

Distinguished guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning. It is my pleasure to join you today for the Customer-Centric Initiative (CCI) Learning Journey at Vivo City.

Indeed, the retail sector is an important component of the Singapore economy. According to the Department of Statistics’ latest Economic Survey, Singapore’s retail sector employs 114,900 workers and has a total operating sales of $38.2 billion in 2009. It contributed approximately 2% to the GDP in 2009. Many economists also use retail sales number as a barometer of the economy. More purchases generally reflect confidence.

Socially, the retail sector also plays an important role. It affects nearly every one of us who makes purchases regularly from one or more of the 20,300 shopping outlets throughout the urban Singapore. How sales persons interact with shoppers can either add to or subtract from the quality of human interactions. In Japan, for instance, shoppers and sales staff interactions are always very pleasant. It is perhaps their social norms there. But one could look at it as the retail sector building and reinforcing the positive social norms on a daily basis.

Service excellence in the retail sector is therefore significant and desirable in more than one way. We promote service excellence for its many benefits: economically and socially.

The Customer Centric Initiative (CCI) is a national effort launched in August 2005, to encourage companies to be committed to service excellence and to take the lead in raising service standards in their industry. I am pleased to note that Singapore's retail sector has since embarked on this journey and many retail companies have applied for funding assistance to upgrade their customer service capabilities.

To date, the CCI has impacted more than 116 retail chains and 21 shopping malls. I would like to encourage more members of the retail sector to sign up for the CCI and achieve new customer satisfaction levels.

Vivo City joined the CCI in early 2007.Since then, Vivo City has (i) engaged its tenants and service staff to develop its service vision and standards, (ii) embarked on aggressive training programs, (iii) improved its retail product offerings, and (iv) conducted mystery audits and various studies on customer insights.

To this end, it is commendable that Vivo City has focused not just on improving customer service, but also customer satisfaction (knowing the difference between the two is crucial). These efforts help create memorable shopping experiences for their customers.

For their efforts and commitment, Vivo City's mall management and tenants have reaped a 10% improvement in revenue year-on-year for the last three years. In addition, I am pleased to learn that as of last month, Vivo City was the only shopping mall awarded the prestigious Singapore Service Class[1] ↗ (opens in new tab) certification. Through the Singapore Service Class certification, Vivo City now has a robust platform through which it can effectively manage service delivery to all its key stakeholders.

Shopping malls like Vivo City also play a pivotal role in the development of the retail and F&B sectors, as they house many such companies of different service mindsets. By embarking on CCI, mall operators can help transform the retail industry in an impactful manner.

To assess the effectiveness of this strategy, SPRING commissioned a customer satisfaction survey in 6 participating malls. The survey covers 8 service touch-points in Car parks, Taxi Services, Getting Around inside the mall, Concierge/Customer Service, Restrooms, Retail, F&B and Promotions. More than 1,000 retail and F&B establishments and 10,000 respondents from 313@Somerset, The Centre point, Hougang Mall, Jurong Point, Raffles City and Vivo City participated in the survey.

The good news is of course Vivo City topped the survey for overall customer satisfaction. Congratulations Vivo City! Your service excellence improvement efforts have paid off.

Another key finding is that customers were more satisfied with the retail and F&B outlets in the 6 malls than those outside the malls. Retail tenants in the six malls achieved a score of 69.4 versus the retail industry average of 68.2. F&B tenants achieved a score of 69.2 versus the F&B industry average of 65.1. This suggests that CCI implemented at the mall level can more effectively raise the collective service level in the entire mall.

Going forward, SPRING will commission a second survey to cover 8 shopping malls, reaching out to 1,500 retail and F&B establishments. Our journey towards service excellence must continue in breath and depth: to cover more malls and their tenants, to ingrain a culture of customer centricity and service pride.

While we have made significant progress in our 5 year CCI journey towards service excellence, we are not there amongst the best in the world. We still can be better and must press on with our efforts to raise service excellence. We have just learnt how Vivo City did it. Now we would like to see others excelling too. Of course, Vivo City will need to break new records by surpassing itself.

[1] ↗ (opens in new tab)The Singapore Service Class is currently administered by SPRING Singapore. The qualifying criteria for the Singapore Service Class involves having a team of both private and public sector business excellence experts to conduct an in-depth assessment using the Service Scorecard on the company to determine if it possesses the necessary service capabilities. Through embarking on the Singapore Service Class certification, Vivo City has created a differentiation for itself among shopping malls in Singapore, by being the only mall to hold this mark of service performance.