On Tuesday, I was at the Ang Mo Kio POSBank branch for some banking transactions. I was carrying my sleeping two-year-old daughter over my shoulder. Any parent will tell you that carrying a two-year-old sleeping child is not easy. Yet no one from the counter had the presence of mind to offer to serve me first. Instead I stood in line for more than half an hour. The experience is not unique to POSBank, but to many other banks here. If banks are so bent on a first-come-first-served system, then at least provide chairs and queue numbers.

Later at the Ang Mo Kio polyclinic, it was a two-hour wait just to see the doctor. I understand that the hallmark of a polyclinic visit is the inevitable long wait. However, this time, the wait was not due to a large crowd but administrative errors that resulted in erroneous records and missing case files. When I asked a nurse about the delay, she simply laughed and said: 'It's not that the doctor does not want to see you. She does not have your file. No file. how to see?'

I thought the nurse's response could have been better. Simple empathy, an offer to check the cause of the delay or offer to expedite service in some way could have gone a long way to appease irate patients. Yes, the polyclinic needs to get its act together but it should also consider how it can expedite consultation for patients who have very young children with them.

Contrast these experiences with my experience at the Ben & Jerry Free Cone Day at Raffles City. In a snaking queue for ice-cream, my four-year-old son and I were pleasantly surprised when a Ben & Jerry employee came up to us and asked us to step out of the queue and get our free cone directly from the counter. The ice-cream was delicious but the proactive service, even more so.

From my experience in many other countries I have visited, mothers with young children are often asked to step out of the queue to be served first, be it a queue at immigration counters or airline counters or in banks. It is not easy carrying a sleeping toddler in the arms or a bawling baby or keeping bored and hyperactive children in line in a queue. Service providers understand this. It is a win-win situation because parents with children can also finish their errands quickly and leave without inconveniencing and annoying other customers.

Here in Singapore, service providers appear indifferent to these nuances of good service. Or perhaps we lack the empowerment? Perhaps counter staff are not empowered to make such decisions for fear of complaints from others in the queue? But if management empowers and supports their counter staff in these snap service decisions, we might see more instances of the elderly and parents with babies or young children being given priority in service. For that to happen, the service quality culture has to be deeply ingrained right from the top and filtered down to the rank and file in no uncertain terms. Otherwise, no amount of Gems and courtesy campaigns will work.

Patricia Koh (Mdm)