Humanity in Customer Service

When I was working as a customer service officer in Kelana Jaya, I did a horrible job. You could ask any of my fellow workmates and they can confirm that. To be perfectly honest, the job bored me, which might be one of the reasons why I sucked at that job. But, after thinking for a while, there might be another reason why. It might be due to my lack of "humanity" in my service.

Any other good customer service officer would tell you this: that to be good in this job, you need to treat another call as a call from a human being, not another call to solve. Imagine you are sitting at your desk right now, waiting for a customer to call for whatever reason he or she has to. Then, the phone is ringing and you quickly adjust the microphone of your headphone to be near to your mouth and you answer, "Hi, this is *whatever company you're in*. I'm Taufik. How may I help you?". Then, the person tells you his or her concern, and in your mind, you will try to find the best way to solve any problem this customer is facing. You are rushing to solving the issue because apparently the more efficient you are, the less time you take to handle a call. While the issue might be solved, but you might be missing out the psychological aspect of the call that can help you deal with the similar issue in the future. Take a look at this example.

Customer Service Officer (CSO): Hi, this is XY. I'm Ali. How may I help you?
Customer: Oh, yesterday I was trying to redeem the points that I have in my account but I couldn't seem to do it. Is there a problem with my point card?
CSO: Can you tell me exactly what happened ma'am?
Customer: I don't know exactly. I was with my husband in your shop, and I saw this book, titled "Political Animals" that I would like to have. Then, when I tried to redeem my points, the card kept being rejected by the machine. I asked the cashier to do it again and again, but he kept asking me to call this number. So, I'm not sure if you could help me.
CSO: Oh, according to our system as you keyed in your ID number, your card has been blocked. I can just unblock it for you and you can start redeeming in about half an hour ma'am.
Customer: Oh, thank you!
CSO: Is there anything else I can help ma'am?
Customer: No, thank you!

The issue is solved right? But then, the interaction could have gone a little different, starting from the moment the customer told the CSO about the book she would like to have.

Customer: I don't know exactly. I was with my husband in your shop, and I saw this book, titled "Political Animals" that I would like to have. Then, when I tried to redeem my points, the card kept being rejected by the machine. I asked the cashier to do it again and again, but he also kept asking me to call this number. So, I'm not sure if you could help me.
CSO: Oh, the book is fantastic ma'am. I can see why it would frustrate you that the card would choose this time to make an issue.
Customer: I know! I have been following this author since his debut in 2004. I mean, my husband could have easily paid for it, but I've been loyal to your bookstore, so I really would like to see my loyalty being appreciated by me being able to get something free once in a while.
CSO: Well, I do understand that ma'am. It feels like a gift, especially when it's something that you like. Well, here's what I will do. I will unblock it so you could start redeeming in about 30 minutes, that is if you have the time today. Would you like to make an order for you so the next time you could just pick up a copy of the book as a way for us to apologize for the inconvenience?
Customer: Oh, that would be fantastic!
CSO: It would be my pleasure ma'am. Is there anything I can help you with?
Customer: No, I think that would be all. Thank you!

Can you see a little hint of empathy in the second set of interaction? Not just the issue was resolved, the customer was happier because you took an extra mile to help her and you actually rephrased her frustration. Well, obviously I didn't do this when I was a CSO, but learning to be a social worker really shows me how to talk to people sometimes. There's a lot to learn, maybe I can share with you more in the future!

Human Contact

"Basic human contact - it's bigger than any idea. It takes you outside yourself. It's more comforting than word. Without it, we die. Sometimes it's not enough, sometimes it's enough for now. Contact grounds you. It brings you back..."

I was watching this second episode of Saving Hope, a new medical drama (let's talk about how I so have time to watch all these when I should be busy burying myself with thesis work later), and it talked about the possibility that human contact, or specifically human touch, could bring you back to life if you're in a coma. Watching this well-made scene, I couldn't help but remember one story when I was having a bad fever.

It was a long time since I had my last fever and it reminded me that it didn't feel good at all. I was just back from the convocation in Penang for my master's degree, and for some reason, my body was failing me, when I could bat fever before it would become worse at any other times. I was shaking and no enough amount of blankets I could have that night that would take away the coldness. My mother gave me two pills of aspirin earlier and she said that tomorrow we'd go to the clinic first thing.

But, later that midnight, she went out of her room, and she checked up on me. I was still shaking, but I was also half asleep. She leaned toward me and touched my head, and rubbed it several times. It is the nicest feeling you can have when you are sick - to be touched, especially from someone you love. Then, she went ahead and changed the wet cloth above my head and rubbed my head again. Not much later, my fever started to go away. Little by little, I started to feel the heat caused by the blankets that I wrapped around myself. Until I completely recovered the next morning.

I didn't realize it, but I do remember how nice it was to be touched when I was in need of someone to take care of me. That's it, human touch is more than a physical gesture, it's a symbol. When done right, it can be an effective way to show someone that you love him or her. I think that's why it could replace aspirin to give the comfort.

A PhD Journey

On 5th of June, I was finally registered to be one of the PhD students in School of Social Work in Universiti Sains Malaysia. It was a busy week, so I could not really update my blog and give opinions on certain psychological issues that I'd be usually be doing in the past. I have already met my supervisor and tomorrow I will be meeting my co-supervisor, someone who has the expertise in the field of criminology.

My thesis will be focused on the concept of restorative justice. Perhaps I will be talking a lot more about it in my future posts. But for the sake of an introduction, restorative justice is a revolutionary system of criminal justice where rather than alienating the offenders from society, we try to bring them back in, along with acknowledging the rights of victims in a process of a criminal conflict resolution.

I hope I would learn something out of this and I do certainly hope that something can be made out of my thesis, and it might become a real policy in our country. It is because I believe in the concept and I believe if implemented in the right way, we can benefit from it, especially the offenders and the victims.

So, please pray for my success. Ameen.

Denial Prayers

"Ahmad is in love with a girl named Fatimah, and nothing he wishes that much other than marrying her. Sadly, the feelings are not mutual, though Fatimah keeps her friendly attitude toward the man. As the result, Ahmad's family is concerned over the fact that Ahmad is reaching his 30's but is still not married. Thus, Ahmad's parents set him up with a nice girl, Aishah. Though Aishah is a girl every man would dream of marrying, Ahmad knows that feelings can't be forced, and his heart is still loyal towards Fatimah. Until he becomes thoroughly devastated and hopeless over his unrequited love, he begins to consider the fact that he just has to marry Aishah and gets this over with. So, he says yes to his parents and Ahmad's family starts the wedding plan right away. In the midst of the planning, Ahmad's hope to be united with his love is up and down - and many of the times too he thinks that until he is actually married, he still has a chance to be with Fatimah. He prays and prays so Allah would make Fatimah has a change of heart and would actually love him in return..."

The story above is fictional.

My post here is nothing about wedding and love or anything related to this. This post poses a question I have been attempting to answer these past few days. At what point of time do your prayers are a  hope or a sign of denial? Though it has been confirmed that Ahmad would marry Aishah, Ahmad keeps his hopes up that anything could happen and Fatimah might actually fall in love with him. The thing is, my question is, Ahmad's prayers, are they hopeful or are they actually denial prayers?

We Muslims have been taught that Allah's power surpasses anything. He can control weathers, the earth, the flow of the life, and also human hearts. So, by this logic, praying that there is a chance Fatimah might accept Ahmad as long as there is time. Allah certainly has the power to change Fatimah's heart. But to judge by the standard of this realistic world, Ahmad is being in denial that Fatimah would not accept him, he keeps having the "fake hope" that anything might happen. So, again, the question is, when is it time to stop praying and start realizing that you need to move forward?

I don't have the answer to this and I hope some of you do. I am currently experiencing the similar situation like Ahmad's, except mine is related to my choices of universities for PhD. What I'm sure is, perhaps this wise heart will know for itself if it's time to stop praying and move on to what is available.

Fairy Tales (Part 2)

In part 1, I talked about how fairy tales stand apart from other kinds of stories we call as fables or myths. Fairy tales have certain unique characteristics that enable them to possess the ability to guide children within their own imaginative capacity. In this part-2, again referencing to Bruno Bettelheim's "The Uses Of Enchantment," I will give an example of a popular fairy tale to show how it addresses a child's conflict in its own empathic way. The story below is written in my own language.

The Fisherman and the Jinny 

"Once upon a time, there was a fisherman in the sea. In the calm sea, he cast his net four times. The first cast gave him a dead donkey, the second a jar filled with sand and mud, and the third was just broken glasses. However, the fourth cast gave him something that he did not foresee finding - a copper jar that contained a huge Jinny. The Jinny was not friendly and kind. All he wanted to do if he was released was to kill the person who released him out of the anger of being trapped for so long. Trying to save his life, the fisherman thought how this beast could be defeated. The fisherman asked, "Oh Jinny, you are a big creature! Are you sure that you came from that very small copper jar?" The Jinny assured the fisherman that he was from there, leading the fisherman to challenge him to fit right back in. When the Jinny did so, the fisherman quickly capped the jar back and threw it to the sea where it belonged."

The fairy tale above tells the story between a huge beast and an ordinary man. Logically, a man with his strength would not be able to defeat a huge beast physically. But he instead used his wit and intelligence to outsmart the Jinny. At last, the Jinny was defeated by his own idiocy.

The fairy tale acknowledges the very fact that in every child's life, there will be a "beast" that he or she would want to get rid of. Be it the parents, a bully at school, a teacher, or anyone whose physical attribute would defeat the child's. The Jinny's desire to kill the person who releases him is not within the logical sense. In our world, the more a person is trapped, the more he or she is grateful when released - but this is not what happens in a child's mind if that child feels entrapped for a long time. What a child feels would be revenge and resentment because it takes someone too long to release him or her. When someone finally reaches out to him, he lashes out.

To a person who doesn't understand, this child will be treated as one who rebels and needs to be punished, but to a person who does will try to put him- or herself in the child's shoe and how egocentric and single-dimensional a child's mind is. As Bruno explained in his book, we cannot expect a child to be able to explain his feeling and say things like, "I'm angry because..." Even half the adult population cannot truly understand themselves why they are angry most of the time.

The fairy tale, if read to the child, can give him or her a sense of direction in imaginative form what and why he feels that way. The story can be empathic to the child's inner need and conflict. Not just this fairy tale, others like Snow White, Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk all have their own purposes and certain conflicts that actually happen in a child's life. For you parents out there, start reading for your children fairy tales and let them run their imagination and fantasy.

Fairy Tales (Part 1)

I already made a post about this book I am reading, "The Uses Of Enchantment." It is a book that talks about how important fairy tales are in children's life - because it is a means for them to seek meaning to their own existence. In this first part of 2-part post I am going to talk further about this point. I will talk about some of ground rules fairy tales need to be like in order to have the effects.

1) Because children's mental processing is very simplistic, fairy tales characters need to be one-dimensional. If one character is evil, then he or she needs to portray as an evil character throughout the whole story. This can give the children clearer choices of what they need to act and behave were they in the same situation.

2) Fairy tales sometimes have non-human characters that have human-like qualities like communicating and having desires. The author asserts that stories like "The Three Little Pigs," "Beauty And The Beast," and some others that have non-human characters acting like humans conform to how a child thinks, fantasizing, and imagining better than other kinds of stories.

3) One significant difference between a fairy tale and a fable or a myth is again the human qualities possessed by the characters. By "human," the author means it is not overmoralistic and heroic like the Gods in Greek myths, for example. Characters in a fairy tale is also presented with choices where one of the choices is always so more tempting and distracting from the main goal. They will think about it, and sometimes even act on it, but they quickly revert back to what brings them to the journey in the first place.

4) Traditional fairy tales are told verbally, unlike modern tales that use pictures and graphics to aid the storytelling. By only telling the stories verbally, children are left with their own imagination on how the stories go on. They can freely imagine how the characters look like and how they continue to walk on their journey. By using pictures to aid the storytelling, children's fantasies are restricted.

5) Fairy tales are not afraid to use extreme points of cases to be the integral part of the stories, and by this, the author means to use cases where supposedly only adults could comprehend - like a death of a loved ones, being lost, poverty, being adopted, an abusive parent, etc. The author believes whether or not the adults like to expose their children to the adult matters, children still face them everyday and they need a means to handle with them.

There are more characteristics and rules that make fairy tales as what they are. But these are some of the important points to note when talking about how fairy tales should be like. Modern stories are very light and only deal with limited conflicts that adults think children could only handle. But we must recognize that children also have conflicts and they need a guide as to how to manage them, and fairy tales can do that.

You Can't Absolutely Know Until You Are There

Stanley Milgram shocked the world with his experiment that found that humans were actually easy to destroy a life - as long as they are put under confinement of an authority. Prior to conducting the experiment, Milgram asked a number of people, including ones who are familiar with the field of psychology, if they could go as far as killing someone if put under the pressure by the authority. Majority of them were confident that they would not, that they would have the capability to stand up for what is right and actually disobey the command of the authority. But the experiment yielded 65% as many people who actually "killed" another human being because the experimenter (who acted as the authority) asked them to do so.

I already talked about Milgram's study on destructive obedience, but one thing I would like to point out here is the study done before the actual obedience experiment - the survey. It is amazing how sure we are when asked about a hypothetical situation. This is called as Illusory Superiority. Illusory Superiority is a term coined to describe individuals who believe that they better than what is expected. They often overestimate their own performance, ability, skills, and sense of right and wrong. When Milgram asked the individuals if they could kill another person if asked by an authority and they largely said "no," while what really happened was 65% of them actually could, they exhibited Illusory Superiority.

Perhaps Illusory Superiority is related to empathic ability - not to another person, but to a hypothetical future. When we put our own selves in the hypothetical situation, we fail to really feel what we would feel in that situation, leading us to overestimate.

Lesson of the say is that we need to really consider several factors before making any rushed conclusion about what we would do in a hypothetical situation because this is beneficial in a number of ways. I also believe if you are careful when it comes to this issue, racism, prejudice, unexpected failure, and a lot of more could be prevented.

Professionalism Is Maturity

Have you ever noticed that your boss seems to be in favor of a certain employee yet he still manages to look professional doing it? Have you ever noticed how much professional your lecturer seems yet a student fails and he saves that student and another fails and he lets the student be. Have you ever noticed that one of your authority figures who has been in various professional situations and who has been trained to practice professionalism still "laughs to the other member's joke louder than yours"?

Growing up studying in higher learning institutions, I've been taught that various situations in a workplace and relationships with our work colleagues require us to be and act professional. I used to denote, and I still do, that professionalism can sometimes be too overrated. But lately, my experience dealing with some people who work in a workplace that oozes professionalism tells me that professionalism always seems to be temporal, and very very inconsistent. This is not an overrating, this is professionalism used in practices for the sake of its hype and trend, rather than for its advantages and importance of use.

My idea of professionalism is to treat all your employees equally, regardless your personal feelings (positive or negative), if you are a boss; or to not let unnecessary emotional ventilation to people who do not have any personal relationship with you; Or to not mix personal feeling with professional ones (if you happen to work in the same place with your wife, for example). But I believe that to totally eradicate personal relationships in the same work setting can have its own drawbacks (e.g. not to talk to your student in the hallway, to have the belief "it's my student's job to text me, not mine," my employee should not sit in the same table with me, etc.). In addition, a workplace or a learning institution can work better and more smoothly if everyone understands each other in a more personal level, rather than limiting knowledge of your colleagues/employees/students to only names, staff no., and the division he or she is put under.

But I digress, my original point in this post is that of all qualities professionals need to have, I believe that one of the most important ones would be have consistent treatments across individuals who work in the same setting. Sadly, from my own observations, a lot individuals who proclaim themselves to be professionals still practice backstabbing and favoritism - which is often sugarcoated by their use of the word, "professionalism" in many communications. And these people the same ones who have the professional experiences, and necessary training to show them that the opposite that they need to do is the opposite.

So, my conclusion is that true professionalism is not measured by how high your qualifications are, how many papers you have written, or how credible and reputable your university was. Professionalism is maturity and one of the only ways to nurture true professionalism is self-awareness and responsibility. I have perceived better professional personality from a person who only holds a degree than a guy who has a doctorate from an expensive university.

I am still learning and with my aspiration to be an effective educator in my field, I hope I am not inflicted with the disease that makes me want to use professionalism to cover my own way of being biased.

It's A Busy April

If you notice, I have only updated one post in this month, which is the lowest if you consider the fact that April is almost ending. Well, my life has been pretty hectic this month; with my sister's engagement, and my convocation, and being sick right after convocation, and some other stuffs that occupied 70% of my free time).

I have nothing significant to say in this post, just one thing that I realized about my life lately. I notice that revenge is only sweet before it is acted out, and to reply an evil act with kindness always feels bitter in the beginning. But in the after-event, revenge always leaves you feeling remorseful, or at least bad, and being kind makes you feel surprisingly satisfied and content (which is not what you supposedly feel before an event).

You might wonder why I am talking about this. Well, just know that some people have blossomed into a person I never knew they could before. In the meantime I have more substantial thing to say later, these are some of the snapshots  in the recent convocation.

Is It Absolutely Your Choice?

I once heard one of my acquaintances said, "I hate it when people blame the others on what would be their own doing."

He's probably right, but I would say that the statement is equally judgemental and immature as, "Others should be blamed on what happens to us..."

While the latter probably comes from a behaviorist, the former comes from someone who employs humanistic views of life too much. As we learn throughout school, we know that extreme and singular utilization of perspective when analyzing something is not encouraged because life is always complicated and multifaceted. I won't talk about the second statement because we learn about that repeatedly growing up. My focus is the first statement, which can be unfair to many out there who find themselves stuck between individualism and collectivism.

We all know the power we have to choose who we want to be, to do what we want to do, and to act what we desire. This is what humanistic psychology asserts, that individuals have the freewill to choose. But much to our dismay, a lot of what we do are the results of the environmental influences - and often we do not realize it. Let me list down some of the social psychological phenomena that happen to us that can counterargue the extreme emphasis on the power of freewill.

1) Social conformity - When confronted by uniform decision from others, we often change our behavior or attitude to conform to that decision. You hang with five of your friends at a cafe, and you are trying to decide what you want to order for dinner. One friend suggests that you order a combo meal where all six of you can eat together, but you don't want that. You want a single meal where that meal belongs to you, only to you. But the other four friends agree to him and now they look at you to know what your decision is. If you are in the real situation, I would say you are pressured to conform to the decision of others and agree to order the combo meal.

2) Destructive obedience - We all know the power authority has upon us, but do you know to what extent the authority can exercise that power? A study by Stanley Milgram, which findings shocked the world, our obedience to the authority can be as destructive to the point of taking someone's life. What it requires for us to obey blindly is just the sign of authority and the belief that whatever we do, the consequences will be faced by the authority, not us. Now, ain't that something a freewill wouldn't do?

3) Bystander Effect - Kitty Genovese, Wang Yue, Ilan Halimi, and many other unreported cases where these people were dying but none offered help. The most disturbing part is that there were a lot of witnesses in the emergency place but the person was left dying on his or her own. The most famous theory to this phenomenon is that when we are surrounded by a a good number people, we always believe someone would step up and help the person. But it's not always the case, and what usually happens is that everybody thinks that and no one actually helps.

These are just among the famous instances where our freewill almost does not matter. What about the case where a wife who won't leave her abusive husband? Or a bully victim who commits suicide? Or a person who has troubles making friends because he has an emotionally crippled family? These are real cases and we often use the simplest logic, that they choose to do it, to explain why it happens. Our behaviors and actions are always the product of the interplay between our own decision making and the influences by the environment. Perhaps the first the society needs to have is awareness, then real change can happen.