People of TAL

Ernie Suryana

Customer Experience and Service Planning Manager

TADM

I have always been mathematically inclined since young and thought that being an accountant was where my passion lay. I would picture myself working as a forensic accountant, helping to investigate fraud and financial irregularities.

However, to make ends meet, I had to cast my dreams aside and worked in frontline-facing roles across various industries, such as Food & Beverage, web design, IT, and education. After being in the customer service field for over 10 years, I finally took the plunge to make a career switch to the financial sector upon graduating from a part-time accountancy degree course at the age of 30.

Truth be told, it was not an easy feat. My applications to financial institutions were met with silence and after job-hunting for two years without success, I decided to seek help from a career coach.

Through our interactions, the coach found me to be voluble and high-spirited and was surprised that I preferred to go into accountancy as it’s mainly a desk-bound job. The career profiling test further validated that foraying into this field might not sit well with me. That was when I made up my mind to pursue a career based on my personality rather than passion.

I returned to my old trade and am currently a Customer Experience and Service Planning Officer at the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM). I really enjoy my role as it allows me to think from a customer’s perspective; from how to put out web content to engage the customers when they visit our website to curating customer satisfaction surveys and conducting focus group discussions to help us understand customers better and their experiences with TADM.

My interest to serve and ensure customer satisfaction goes way beyond my job. During my 2.5 years’ stint in TADM, strangers would often approach me for directions, whenever I head out for lunch. This is something that even my colleagues find peculiar. During my first month at TADM, I made it a point to find out all the ATMs, shops, and linkways near my office so that I could direct strangers to their destinations when approached. Seeing their lost faces breaking into a smile really brightens up my day. It also gives me the reassurance that perhaps, staying in customer service is where I truly belong and where my passion lies after all.