What makes for great service at a restaurant? Which type of service would you prefer and ascribe to under the following scenario?
Scenario: Hotel Restaurant in Bali
You and your friend sit down at a restaurant and then the waiter serves both of you. He comes to your table several times in order to take an order, deliver the drinks and dishes, and present the bill. During this entry time, you are engaged in a heavy conversation with your friend. So, should the waiter do his job:
1. Without really calling for too much attention from you and your friend or
2. Gain your attention every time by interrupting your conversation with a friendly “excuse me Sir/Madam” followed by the name of the item ordered as he places it in front of you.
Do you:
1. Fully appreciate the politeness and continuous attentiveness or
2. Think the waiter is a bit annoying or
3. Feel that his sincerity is not genuine because of this constant and robotic-like politeness.
Balinese staff’s frequent interaction with either an “excuse me” or “hello” accompanied by a smile and eye contact may be part of the local culture or behaviors that were taught and reinforced through a behavioral training to offer a high level of customer service. As for the latter, L&D managers were quite successful at promoting a pre-defined level of hospitality.
An important point to realize is that when substantial resources are exerted for teaching, improving, and “reinforcing” customer service, the L&D team should strive to understand the company’s customers and their expectations first. Then, the most important question remains; what kind of service is warranted, appreciated, needed, and wanted by the customer group? Customer service is only excellent in the eyes of the beholders.
1 comment:
hey Magda,just want to let you know I'm enjoying your posts, found your blog via polkiwswiecie.com - I'm a graphic designer and tutor, with a bend on advertising tactics and consumer behavior and motivations vs. persuasion of advertising language, I'm also doing some sociology papers at the moment so I'm feeding this back into my current reading and teaching. Born in PL, I went through the education system on the old continent, comparing things with my current home base - NZ, always interesting.
as per post theme - good point, I think for most people this is part and parcel of the whole holiday experience - it's a treat, an indulgence, it's almost an expected part of the whole being waited on experience - on a plane, at the hotel in a restaurant. if you're in your everyday reality, going down to your local for a meal, and getting into a convo with a friend, that'd be OTT and intrusive. So maybe it's all context dependent?
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