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TOWNGAS EMPLOYEES like to refer to their 'culture of safety'. Hong Kong and China Gas (Towngas) head of corporate human resources K. S. Yeung said: 'It's the overriding concern.'

Imparting that culture was one of the most important aspects of training for new recruits, he said.

'We need to develop them to understand our culture. Safety and reliability always come first,' Mr Yeung said.

Towngas is dealing with a volatile substance. A gas explosion, while highly unlikely, thanks to engineering efforts, is always within the realms of possibility.

Mr Yeung said employees appreciated that what they did had a direct impact on the lives of many people and that a moment's carelessness could lead to injury or death.

The company implements a 'leakage survey programme' under which technicians regularly check gas pipes using instruments that can detect even very low levels of gas leakage.

The company serves more than 1.5 million customers in Hong Kong and has managed to keep fatal accidents down - there have been three in the past five years.

The number of gas emergencies has declined steadily, from 32 in 1999 to 15 last year.

This is even more impressive considering the number of customers per employee has gradually risen in the same period.

While the firm was not immune to the economic downturn, it has kept response time down.

Retail marketing manager Catherine Wong said the average response time to a gas incident last year was 19 minutes.

She said employees were made aware of the importance of service quality and to strive 'to maximise the values that exceed our customers' expectations'.

It was this quality that would keep customers in the long run. For service-based businesses, 20 years of reliability could be wiped out by 30 seconds on the phone with a customer service officer who was less than polite.

Keeping up morale, particularly during an economic downturn, was of primary importance if workers were to keep performing well. Ms Wong said putting the customer first did not have to be done at the expense of staff.

'A 'no layoffs, no salary cut' policy was maintained even during the economic downturn in the past few years. We believe only happy and satisfied employees will have the right attitude towards our customers,' Ms Wong said.

As with most firms, employees are given internal awards and Towngas takes these seriously.

'Recognition of positive behaviour has a self-reinforcing effect,' Ms Wong said.

Management seeks ideas from staff. 'To design an excellent service delivery process, everybody is involved in giving ideas on what the process should be,' she said.

'The ideas of frontline staff are collected ... and executive committee members seek every chance to meet employees directly at lunch gatherings and informal after-work gatherings.' The measures seem to work.

Ms Wong said while Towngas customer service officers received 41 complaints last year, they had 2,362 compliments. The statistics are more remarkable considering that disgruntled customers are more likely to call.

As the company accelerates its all-important expansion in the mainland, one of the crucial factors is maintaining its service quality.

Mr Yeung said the quality of service Towngas provided on the mainland was not quite up to Hong Kong standards.

'But the goal is to provide the same level, the same quality of service there as we do here,' he said.

Mainland staff would be best trained by bringing them to Hong Kong, 'so they can see and experience the kind of service we deliver to our customers'.



Towngas puts 'culture of safety' at the forefront of its work ethic