Edmund Tan
Accountant-General's Department

You can tell that a front-line staff is an outstanding service provider from the compliments he receives, the awards he gets, as well as the fact that customers repeatedly request for his service. Get to meet Edmund Tan, an outstanding Customer Relationship Assistant from the Accountant-General's Department (AGD).

Edmund is a key member of AGD's Helpdesk and Training Branch. He provides critical support to government agencies that use AGD's financial systems.

Even though he joined AGD only three years ago, Edmund has already chalked up over 100 compliments to date. From giving advice on system functionalities to resolving system glitches, Edmund consistently delivers excellent service. He never hesitates to go the distance when attending to a request or query, even when it means going beyond his job scope.

Swift response

On one occasion, an officer from the Public Service Division (PSD) was trying to create a goods receipt to effect a payment that would soon be overdue.

Said Edmund, who called the officer the moment he learnt of the case: "We normally attend to enquiries via email. But I called him immediately knowing that it was an urgent case."

Over the telephone, Edmund walked him through the workflow process, providing detailed instructions on how to create the goods receipt.

As a result, it took the PSD officer less than three minutes to get the job done. If Edmund had just referred him to the relevant section of the online training guide, the officer could have taken over an hour to complete the task.

Delighted with Edmund's response, PSD sent a complimentary email which read: "My receiving officer would like to thank you for the quick, prompt and accurate replies to solve his problem.. Our problems are always solved when you attend to us. You take the trouble to call users to guide them when their problems are too technical to be understood."

Applying expert knowledge

On another occasion, Edmund helped finance officers from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) who needed to reconcile the figures in two financial reports.

Instead of just providing the financial details for their verification, Edmund examined the reports and gave a detailed breakdown of the figures to help the officers to understand the differences.

As he had in-depth knowledge of the reports, he took less than an hour to furbish the exact details the MHA staff required.

Edmund's expert knowledge and excellent service won him this compliment: "Edmund Tan is helpful, understanding, patient, quick in answering queries and excellent in solving NFS@Gov problems."

Building users' knowledge

Edmund strongly believes that equipping customers with skills and knowledge of AGD's systems is more important than providing them with advice. Hence he has embarked on a project to enhance AGD's e-learning platform. This way, customers can gain more knowledge on the useful functionalities of AGD's systems.

Kudos for excellent service

Edmund received the All about Good Service Award from AGD in 2004. He was also presented the Quality Service Award from AGD for exemplifying the CARE values - Courtesy, Accessibility, Responsiveness and Effectiveness.

Glad to be a service provider, Edmund said: "I am a people-oriented person and my helpdesk job fits my personality. The job satisfaction from providing excellent service to customers has far exceeded my expectations.

"When I see that my customers benefit from the advice I provide - now that's a good feeling!">

— Contributed by Lynn Chay, AGD