Lessons in CX: A trip to South East Asia - Part 2 – Not taking a stroll
around Kuala Lumpur.
If Singapore is a city seemingly built from the ground up to be as effortless as
possible to both inhabit and visit, Kuala Lumpur is a very different experience.
The Malaysian capital was our second stop on a two-week tour of South East Asia. A
tour that aimed to share our observations about global Customer Experience trends
and discuss how organisations in the region are affected
by changing customer needs across a diverse market. And we were lucky enough to be
hosted by leading national and international businesses in every country, each a
household name.
As it had been in Singapore, it felt important to interpret our experience of
the city and how this potentially shaped the companies we were visiting, many of
them originating in Malaysia and head-quartered in Kuala Lumpur.
An airport in the forest. A microcosm of Malaysian culture
We arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) on a weekday evening. The
bustle of this enormous transport hub – the international gateway to Malaysia
– was noticeable compared to the more serene Singapore
Changi airport we’d departed just an hour earlier.
KLIA is an impressive feat of construction. Like Changi, it was constructed to be
environmentally friendly, built to the concept of “an airport in the forest
and a forest in the airport”, representing the tropical
splendour of Kuala Lumpur’s natural resources. And it certainly fulfils the
brief, surrounding travellers with a pleasant, green environment as they pass
through its terminals.
But ground-breaking architectural concepts aside, KLIA knows it’s a
passenger’s toilet experience that lives long in their memory and after a week
in Singapore we were used to being asked to once again rate
ours.
As well as showcasing the country’s unique environment, the airport plays its
role in presenting Malaysia as an open, progressive nation. In September this year
KLIA launched HIMPUN, a month-long showcase of the best
of the country’s fashion, craft and food products.
An airport is often seen as a microcosm of a nation. KLIA has taken this literally by
actively bringing the richness of the Malaysian landscape and culture into the
airport, at the same time creating a positive and unique
experience for travellers arriving in the country.
Profiting from perambulation. The drive to improve transport
Kuala Lumpur is a city that is heavily reliant on the car. Reportedly, only 20% of
inhabitants use the city’s public transport network. This was immediately
apparent as we joined a congested highway to drive the 50
km from KLIA to our hotel in the downtown area of Kuala Lumpur, nicknamed ‘The
Golden Triangle’.
And when we naively tried to venture out of our hotel to explore our surroundings on
foot (and find a bar to toast our arrival in country two of our three-country tour)
a lack of pavements to separate us from the busy network
of surrounding roads forced us into a prompt retreat.
Kuala Lumpur is not a city designed for perambulation. Although that’s
changing. To avoid evolving into an urban (pavement-less) dystopia the Malaysian
government has been working on major development programmes to
make downtown Kuala Lumpur more pedestrian friendly, realising that they need to
balance economic and physical growth with a sustainable city that people enjoy
living in and visiting.
No doubt with an eye of the success of their neighbours, Singapore, Kuala
Lumpur’s Executive Director of Planning, Mahadi Ngah has alluded to future
measures to drive public transport usage, including imposing restrictions
on vehicle usage.
And City Hall has realised that walkability of the city is a key driver of public
transport usage. In 2012 the River of Life project was launched, redeveloping Kuala
Lumpur’s riverside to create promenades, parks
and retail spaces – and seemingly mandatory for every city we visited in South
East Asia, a night-time light show spectacular in the heart of the city to delight
visitors.
Bringing the outside in. Driving employee empowerment
Our first meeting in Kuala Lumpur was with a Telecommunications company in a business
park on the outskirts of the city. A familiar office façade hid a unique
environment inside. In the lobby large videos screens
hung above an oasis of calming, low level water pools. At the open-air rear of the
building a small waterfall trickled down a natural rock face. Echoing Kuala Lumpur
Airport’s celebration of the natural environment
of Malaysia, in the design of their headquarters this company had consciously
brought the outside in.
The video screen in front of us wasn’t advertising the company to visitors but
talking directly to its own employees. Senior Directors were being interviewed about
internal company initiatives, interspersed with news
of money raised at a recent charity day and the results of the latest company
fussball tournament.
Or maybe this content was for visitors, showcasing a vibrant and unique company
culture, whilst at the same time driving a sense of togetherness and employee
empowerment – a recognition of the fact that, despite advancements
in technology and AI, it is still front-line employees that ultimately drive the
experience a company delivers to its customers.
Crowded, messy and authentic. A culinary adventure
That evening we visited Jalan Alor, one of Kuala Lumpur’s most famous and
vibrant street markets – a seemingly endless row of plastic tables and chairs
spilling out from pavement cafes, butting up against colourful
fresh food stalls wok-frying noodles and grilling skewered meats. The noise, sights
and smells combined to create a rich, multi-sensory experience.
In contrast to Singapore’s largely orderly streets, Jalan Alor is crowded,
messy and authentic. As a result, we felt like we were experiencing the
‘real’ Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia’s ethnically diverse
culture through its cooking.
By the time we’d fought our way through the dense crowd of locals and tourists
to the other end of the street we were desperate to sample this cooking with a cold
beer. No wonder both tasted so good.
“You’ll need gloves.” A theatrical tasting
experience
We had one more culinary experience before we left Kuala Lumpur for Hong Kong. As our
hosts sat us down in a local Durian café and handed us some plastic gloves
they tittered at our collective bafflement.
A Durian (we learned) is an intensely pungent, bittersweet fruit with an otherworldly
appearance. Due to its overpowering smell, it’s been banned on public
transport across South East Asia. In Singapore we’d
even noticed signs in our hotel stipulating Durians were not allowed on the
premises.
To attract tourists intrigued by its unique taste, Durian cafes in Kuala Lumpur have
created a bit of culinary theatre. Asked to pick one of the large, spikey fruits
from the display shelf, our server wielded a large knife
and chopped it into quarters in the middle of the table before handing us a piece
each.
Our consumption of the Durian resulted in facial expressions that were apparently
photo worthy. The sweet yet savoury, creamy yet cheesy taste that would stay with us
all the way to Hong Kong.
We’d fast run out of time to see Kuala Lumpur’s iconic 88-storey Petronas
twin towers. According to Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamad’s, the landmark
was conceived and designed in 1993 to explicitly
represent Malaysia’s aspirations to be a ‘global player’ on the
world stage – the sentiment of a city keen to attract business and showcase
its diversity whilst working hard to improve the living
standards of its residents.
When we asked our hosts what the best way to view the towers was we should have
anticipated the reply, “We could drive around them?”
Note: This article is written by Eliot Sykes, Head of Customer Experience at
Ethology, a sister company of Splash. Eliot and his team were on a 2 week visit of
Asia, introducing the Ethology offering to Clients of ours.