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  • Accountability Cannot Be Automated Away

    Accountability Cannot Be Automated Away

    A misplaced phone in a car became a small reminder that not every human problem fits neatly into an automated system. IMAGE: AI-GENERATED ILLUSTRATION VIA CHATGPT

    A young lawyer once told me she preferred not to deal with humans.

    At the time, I found it funny. Perhaps even understandable. Anyone who has worked with clients, customers, bosses, suppliers or service counters will know that human beings can be wonderfully complicated creatures.

    But lately, I have been thinking about the other side of that statement.

    What happens when we need a human being — and the system gives us an app, a chatbot or a help page instead?

    I got into a Grab car recently and noticed a handphone on the seat. The driver, flustered, remembered his last passengers — a woman and her elderly mother, whom he had fetched from a clinic.

    He took a small detour to check if they were still nearby. They were not. He said he would return after dropping me off.

    What struck me was not just his effort. It was what he said next: there used to be a support line he could call for situations like this. Now everything is automated. He did not know who to contact.

    The story ended well. The phone owner eventually called.

    But what if she had not?

    The second story did not end as cleanly.

    A travel app showed a limited-time offer — last two rooms, timer running. After I entered my bank details, the cursor kept spinning. Uncertain whether the payment had gone through, I tried again.

    It had.

    I had made a double booking.

    I immediately tried to cancel one. The bot said it could be cancelled but not refunded — policy. When I tried to explain what had happened, it replied: “I do not understand your issue.”

    A bot acting like a bot is forgivable.

    The next day, I contacted the app company, the hotel and the bank.

    The app company said it would look into the matter and check with the hotel. The bank said it could not do anything as the issue was between me and the app company. The hotel understood perfectly, but said the app company would have to handle it.

    About a week later, the app company sent an email stating that it would cancel the booking because I had changed my mind. I replied that I had not changed my mind, and explained once again what had happened.

    Another email, signed by another person, arrived in my inbox saying he would look into it. Then came a third email, from yet another person, saying the booking could be cancelled but the money would remain in the app for me to use on another booking. In other words, the booking could be cancelled, but the payment would not be returned to me as a refund.

    I was not cancelling the trip. I was requesting that one unnecessary booking be reversed because the booking process had failed at a critical moment. There is a difference between offering store credit and taking responsibility for what went wrong.

    That, to me, is the real problem. Not automation itself, but automation without human accountability.

    Apps are useful when everything goes according to script. But when the script breaks, someone still has to take ownership, exercise judgement and decide what is fair.

    A company can spend heavily on branding and promotions to attract customers. But when something goes wrong, can it also respond with basic goodwill instead of hiding behind process?

    This is the gap that automation has not closed.

    Not routine transactions. Apps handle those well enough.

    But moments that require judgement, context and the ability to say: “I understand what happened, and I am going to help make this right.”

    Is automation useful? Of course.

    Until something unexpected surfaces — something that needs empathy, discretion or simply a person willing to listen.

    Apps can be automated. Processes can be automated. But accountability cannot be automated away.

    Some problems still need a human voice. The irony is that the more systems try to remove that voice, the more valuable it becomes.

    Note: Images used in this post are AI-generated illustrations created with ChatGPT.

  • When Customers Come Looking: Apple, Omakase and the Pull of a Brand

    When Customers Come Looking: Apple, Omakase and the Pull of a Brand

    The Apple Store at the Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur. PHOTO: CHUAH BEE KIM

    During five hours at Apple The Exchange TRX in Kuala Lumpur, I watched people buy premium technology almost as casually as they might order a cup of coffee.

    It was a weekday, but the store hummed with a weekend crowd. Perhaps the mid-year school holidays explained part of it. Still, what struck me was not merely the number of people inside Malaysia’s first Apple Store.

    It was the way many of them appeared to shop.

    Customers approached staff with questions and requests. Some seemed ready to make their purchases without needing lengthy persuasion. The staff were not chasing reluctant shoppers or running through aggressive sales pitches. The buyers were already curious. Some looked as though they had arrived already convinced.

    The products seemed to sell themselves.

    I was there for a simple data transfer between my old phone and my new one. With five hours to kill, I became a quiet observer of this retail ecosystem.

    The staff were undeniably impressive. Despite the relentless foot traffic, those I encountered were composed, patient and pleasant.

    But the real force in the room was not the service. It was the invisible pull of the brand itself.

    That pull became clearer when I thought back to my Grab ride to the mall earlier that day.

    The driver had shared a painful chapter of his life. Driven by a passion for cooking, he had once invested a substantial amount in a restaurant business.

    It did not last. Eventually, he faced the hard truth that pouring more money into the venture was merely funding a sinking ship. He chose to cut his losses and walk away.

    Later in the ride, he spoke about a local omakase operator whose business, he said, was thriving.

    The contrast stayed with me. Here was one man with culinary skills, raw passion and substantial capital whose business did not survive, while another appeared to thrive in one of the most premium segments of the dining market.

    The driver believed branding had made a difference. His own bak kut teh venture, he said, had started with only a small allocation for branding.

    Naturally, reality is more complicated. A single conversation during a Grab ride does not reveal the whole truth. Factors such as location, rent, pricing, margins, timing and operational execution could all have shaped the outcome. It would be unfair to draw a definitive conclusion from one person’s account.

    Yet, sitting in the Apple Store hours later, his words echoed.

    Why do some businesses have to work so hard for every single ringgit, while others appear to attract premium buyers with far less resistance?

    A bak kut teh dish competes on taste, portion size, price and familiarity. It satisfies a daily hunger.

    Omakase sells something different. Beyond the food, it offers curation, craftsmanship, exclusivity and experience.

    Similarly, Apple is not merely selling a phone, a tablet or a laptop. It is selling design, familiarity, an ecosystem and the confidence many customers attach to its name.

    Branding cannot rescue a bad product. Nor does a sleek logo guarantee commercial success.

    But a good product is merely the baseline.

    Before customers reach for their wallets, they must first be given a reason to desire what is being sold.

  • When Malls Have Defibrillators but Schools Don’t

    When Malls Have Defibrillators but Schools Don’t

    Khoo Jet Seng, Honorary Secretary of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society Johor Bahru Branch, during the CPR and AED training session at SJK(C) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri. The school’s headmaster, Ing Boon Keong, is seated on the far left. PHOTO: LEE WEE KIONG.

    There is a cabinet near the entrance of my regular mall. I walk past it sometimes. It says AED above it — Automated External Defibrillator — with a red heart and a lightning bolt symbol that signals something urgent. I assume the device is inside.

    I have never seen anyone open it.

    I have also never checked whether the battery inside still works, whether the pads have expired, or whether anyone in the vicinity is actually trained to use it. I suspect most people who walk past it haven’t either.

    This is not a criticism of the mall. Malaysia has been moving — rightly — toward wider AED placement in public spaces, with Selangor studying guidelines for new developments and public areas.

    But here is the question I keep turning over: what about schools?

    A child spends roughly six hours a day, five days a week, at school. Teachers are, by sheer daily proximity, the adults most likely to be present if a student collapses — whether from sudden cardiac arrest, a medical episode, or something nobody saw coming. And yet there is no equivalent mandate requiring AEDs in Malaysian schools. No policy. No allocation. The gap is not from a lack of caring. It is, honestly, a matter of money.

    A single AED unit can cost several thousand ringgit, with some Malaysian suppliers placing typical prices roughly between RM5,000 and RM15,000, depending on the model and features. Then there is the maintenance — battery replacements, pad expiry, servicing — which adds up quietly over time. For most government schools operating on tight budgets, this is not a realistic line item. So the machines don’t come.

    And here is where it gets uncomfortable: even where AEDs do exist — in malls, in lobbies, along highways — I wonder how many of us would actually reach for one. Panic is a strange thing. In a real emergency, the three seconds of knowing where the device is and the thirty seconds of remembering how to use it can feel very far away from any training session you may have attended two years ago. Muscle memory requires repetition. Most of us have had none.

    Koh Yee Mei, Rotary Club of Tebrau project organiser, Lee Wee Kiong, Training Officer-in-Charge of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society Johor Bahru Branch, taking part in the CPR and AED training programme at SJK(C) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri. PHOTO: LEE LIE FEEI.

    The gap is not entirely about equipment. It is also about whether people know what to do in the minutes before help arrives.

    This is why I found myself paying attention when I came across what the Rotary Club of Tebrau (RCT) has been doing quietly in Johor Bahru.

    Rather than waiting for the AED funding question to resolve itself — which could take years — they are building the human infrastructure first. Since 2023, in partnership with the Malaysian Red Crescent Society Johor Bahru branch, they have been training teachers and school staff in CPR and AED use. Not a one-off event. A rolling programme, school by school, batch by batch. The most recent sessions were held at Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (Cina) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri.

    The logic is straightforward and, I think, rather wise.

    An AED without a trained person nearby is just a box on the wall. But a trained person — someone who knows what to do, how to stay calm, and how to act in those first critical minutes — is already a first responder, with or without the machine.

    If the machine eventually arrives, they will know how to use it. If it does not arrive yet, they are still better equipped than they were yesterday.

    Dr A.R. Leenah Devi Rajah, who leads the RCT, put it plainly: “One minute of first aid can change a life, especially in a school setting where teachers spend the most time with students on a daily basis.” Teachers are the adults in the room. Training them is the most practical place to start.

    I will admit I came to this story as an outsider. I am not a medical professional. I cannot tell you whether the AED in your mall lobby is in working condition, or who is responsible for checking it, or whether your school’s canteen aunty has ever done a CPR course. These are questions I genuinely do not know the answer to — and I suspect they are questions most of us have never thought to ask.

    What I do know is this: cardiac arrest does not wait for the right location. It does not check whether you are in a mall, a classroom or a school field. And in Malaysia, where cardiovascular disease (CVD) is affecting people at younger ages — with the National Heart Institute (IJN) citing a 2019 study that found almost one in four CVD patients were below 50 — the odds that a teacher, a staff member, or a fellow student might one day need to act are not as remote as we would like to think.

    The RCT cannot solve the whole problem alone. But it is doing something concrete, in a place where children spend most of their waking hours, with the people most likely to be standing there when it matters.

    Participants, organisers and trainers gather for a group photo following the CPR and AED training session held at SJK(C) Cheah Fah. PHOTO: ROTARY CLUB OF TEBRAU

    All photos courtesy of Rotary Club of Tebrau and Koh Yee Mei, the event organising chairperson and project organiser.

    The news report on the CPR and AED training programme at SJK(C) Cheah Fah in Iskandar Puteri is on Newswav.