DBS CEO Tan Su Shan personally responds to customer's complaint on LinkedIn post while on plane

A man in Singapore, who took to LinkedIn on May 27 to air his frustration over a DBS Bank feature that had been broken for more than two weeks, received a personal response from the bank's chief executive after about an hour.

DBS service allegedly non-functional for over two weeks

In his post, Neelkamal Semwal wrote that a service allowing customers to register their NRIC with their account had been non-functional for over 15 days.

Despite raising the issue with customer service more than a week prior, he said it remained unresolved.

"Even after complaining about it with customer care more than a week ago, they still haven't either figured out how to fix this or just don't care," he wrote, adding that neither DBS's customer service nor its app development team appeared "sincere about fixing issues".

Semwal also tagged DBS Chief Executive Officer Tan Su Shan and Chief Information Officer Eugene Huang directly in the post.

CEO responds to post

Tan responded to the post after about an hour, noting that she was on a plane at the time.

"Just had my tech team check this out for you. Am on a plane but someone will definitely respond," she replied in the comments.

Semwal thanked Tan for her prompt action, while apologising for taking the matter to social media.

"Apologies for escalating it here as even with long periods of waiting for customer care to pick up the call, I neither got it resolved nor the email they told me they would send," he wrote.

Tan's swift reply also drew praise from other users.

In a follow-up comment, Semwal said the matter had since been addressed.

"I got a call from DBS to help me in fixing this issue. According to them, it should be resolved very soon. Thanks to Tan Su Shan for the initiative. So, all fine here."

Needed to get tax refund from IRAS

Speaking to Mothership, Semwal shared that he had a tax refund from the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), and getting it required him to register his FIN to PayNow via DBS.

However, he encountered a persistent error on both the website and app for 20 days.

After contacting customer support, Semwal was promised a follow-up email that never arrived, prompting him to turn to LinkedIn out of frustration.

Following Tan's response, a DBS representative called Semwal within an hour with a potential fix.

"I think if I had received that email from DBS, it would have been fine, but I didn't, so I had to escalate it after 10 days," he said.