Customer Service

Few days ago, My clients brought me to one of the so called "No.1" hotel in their state. As I had heard many good remarks about this hotel, I was so eager to have a look at the place and expecting the "wow" services there. To my surprise, the employees are not well-trained at all. My clients booked the meeting room earlier. When we arrived, we asked for the direction to our meeting room but we got the typical answer "I dont know! I am not sure! Nobody tell me about this!" (If anything happen, NOT my fault!). Then came the second staff when he saw us about to leave. He answer "Of course we have the meeting room, please follow me". He brought us to a few meeting room which are "messy", expecting us to wait for them to clean up. (Wrong strategy, No results!). I wonder if the management understand the importance of customer service.

There are many incidents when I approached the customer service officer or front desk, he ro she will look at me with a "sour" face as if I owe them "$$$" but in contradict their badge is flowered with words such as "service with smile". What a pity! I believe an organization must always match the company's vision, mission or even core values in line with the employee's behavior at the work place. Communications play an importance role in making sure all levels of employees understand the directions, values and expected behaviors to build the company image and culture. One way to do this is to set clear KPI (key performance indicators) with 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) ratings with clear elaborations on each. These will also serve as a SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) for them to upgrade their skills.

Please rate yourself as below. It covers for both internal or external customer.

1 (very poor) - No alertness in customer services. Very lacking of smiling face and eye contact. Don't like to greet customers and often received complaints and negative feedback.

2 (poor) - Low alertness in customer services. Greet with smiling face and having eye contacts to selective customers only. Most of the customers do not feel happy about the services.

3 (Average) - Customers' basic needs are met. No complaint about the services and no "wow" as well.

4 (Good) - Greet all customers with smiling face, having eye contacts during communication. High alertness at work. Customer requests are dealt promptly and satisfactorily.

5(Excellent)- Greet all customers with smiling face, having eye contact during communication and high alertness. Customer are deligheted with "wow" (gave compliments to him/her).

Where are you?