Originally Posted by
pokfur
This reminds me that recently I was on the phone with an agent who did not speak with a Singaporean accent, so I thought i had been routed to an offshore one. I was driving, and suddenly the heavens opened and I couldn't hear him over the speakerphone. After making a comment about the rain, he was surprised and said 'Oh, it's raining there? It's not raining here!' which led to an inane conversation about where I was and that it wasn't raining where he was but he couldn't tell me exactly where he was but assured me he was physically on the same little island as I was. So my conclusion is that the agents may not necessarily be based overseas, but doesn't mean they are manned by Singaporeans with Singlish accents.
Most importantly he was able to assign me seat 11A.
LOL. But yes they definitely have an overseas call centre - I asked a Singaporean-sounding staff on the phone before. He said that usually all calls are routed to the staff sitting in Singapore unless there's too much call volume and then some will get diverted to overseas call centre staff.
I got one of them before and I said "I would like to cancel a ticket and have called you guys as the system doesn't let me cancel the ticket online". This was a redemption ticket that had been tweaked offline previously. Response was "Oh sir, if you want to cancel the ticket, you can do this online at our website singaporeair.com". I hung up. Heh.
SG-based ones have been really good. I once called at X hours to cancel a redemption ticket but I realized at X+10 min after hanging up that I didn't want to cancel it after all and called back. Reached a different agent and upon hearing my urgent request to stop any cancellation, could hear her calling out (rather loudly) to her colleague probably a few tables away. She apologized for raising her voice but to me, it doesnt matter that she raised her voice. What matters is she got the reversal instructions through to the original service officer the FASTEST way. But I am sure some other SQ users would probably get all butthurt at being "shouted at" by an SQ staff and would start complaining about that...