About a hundred years ago, when I was in secondary school, I temped during the holidays as a salesgirl in one of our major retail outlets. I was assigned the ladies' department. On a rotational basis, we did 'fitting room duty'. Now, strange as it may seem, we were instructed to ask customers to return the clothes they tried to the racks they got the clothes from! I remember it did seem rather odd to me then. As at least one customer said, 'Aren't you all paid to do that?' Well, that was the ladies' department policy and it was implemented, while I was there anyway, without incident most of the time.
This must be quite unheard of today, I think. I don't remember being asked to put clothes back on the racks myself, though I have been asked to look through the racks myself for the correct size / colour, etc because 'everything is hanging; we don't keep stocks.'
I do think the quality of service has improved over the years but, of course, improvement does not mean that we are there. As the PM pointed out, we need to take a leaf or two from other more service-oriented countries. Actually, I can only think of two countries (which I will not name) where the service industry is worse than that in Singapore. So, in fact, we need to take many leaves from the rest of the world about how customers should be treated. Just looking around at our neighbours should be good enough. The friendliness of the Thais or Filipinos is legendary, and you would be served your mee goreng with sincere smiles in a small-town coffee shop in Indonesia. Further north, the Japanese never fail to make you feel like they are going out of their way just for you. Interestingly, we did not have a single 'rude' encounter in Korea, which is rumoured to have curt and unfriendly people. But we did have a couple of Japan-like experiences there, when people came up to us out of the blue to help translate or to get a cab, etc. No doubt, there will be such instances in Singapore, too, but the point is this kind of behaviour doesn't come automatically or naturally to many people here.
A minister, no less, is now to oversee this transformation of gruff and to-the-point Singaporeans into warm and friendly beings. That will be interesting indeed. For a start, maybe employers should make sure front-line staff speak and understand decent English. I am harping on the standard of English again, but this is supposed to be an English-speaking country and I find it annoying when service staff can't understand what I'm saying (not very complicated things) or insist on communicating in Mandarin. Foreign employees aside, it is most annoying when these non-English speaking staff turn out to be Singaporeans!
But who am I to suggest this, as I am no expert, and, as mentioned, am, in fact, part of the 'poor' standard of service here. What's more I 'escaped', through fortunate turns of events, going to 'Service Quality' camp twice! Let's see what the minister has up his sleeve...
This must be quite unheard of today, I think. I don't remember being asked to put clothes back on the racks myself, though I have been asked to look through the racks myself for the correct size / colour, etc because 'everything is hanging; we don't keep stocks.'
I do think the quality of service has improved over the years but, of course, improvement does not mean that we are there. As the PM pointed out, we need to take a leaf or two from other more service-oriented countries. Actually, I can only think of two countries (which I will not name) where the service industry is worse than that in Singapore. So, in fact, we need to take many leaves from the rest of the world about how customers should be treated. Just looking around at our neighbours should be good enough. The friendliness of the Thais or Filipinos is legendary, and you would be served your mee goreng with sincere smiles in a small-town coffee shop in Indonesia. Further north, the Japanese never fail to make you feel like they are going out of their way just for you. Interestingly, we did not have a single 'rude' encounter in Korea, which is rumoured to have curt and unfriendly people. But we did have a couple of Japan-like experiences there, when people came up to us out of the blue to help translate or to get a cab, etc. No doubt, there will be such instances in Singapore, too, but the point is this kind of behaviour doesn't come automatically or naturally to many people here.
A minister, no less, is now to oversee this transformation of gruff and to-the-point Singaporeans into warm and friendly beings. That will be interesting indeed. For a start, maybe employers should make sure front-line staff speak and understand decent English. I am harping on the standard of English again, but this is supposed to be an English-speaking country and I find it annoying when service staff can't understand what I'm saying (not very complicated things) or insist on communicating in Mandarin. Foreign employees aside, it is most annoying when these non-English speaking staff turn out to be Singaporeans!
But who am I to suggest this, as I am no expert, and, as mentioned, am, in fact, part of the 'poor' standard of service here. What's more I 'escaped', through fortunate turns of events, going to 'Service Quality' camp twice! Let's see what the minister has up his sleeve...
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