Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Poor service staff training.

I recently attended a dinner that was held in a small ballroom. There were abot 150 to 200 guests all seated at tables of ten. This was in Damansara.

While speed of serving food was not good, it was still somewhat tolerable. Finally we came to the dessert. The waiter brought a large bowl that contained a white watery dessert. One of the guests at my table asked the waiter what it was. To my surprise and utter shock, the waiter answered curtly "I don't know" and continued to serve the dessert into separate smaller bowls. And he only answered after he was asked a second time.

What was appalling was the fact that he had a rather "Don't know don't care attitude" as he didn't even offer to find out what the dessert was. He just left it at that which prompted me to ask sarcastically, "Is that edible or not?" to which he pretended not to hear. By the way he is a foreign worker from Myanmar.

Having to employ foreign workers is not an issue with me but the attitude and rudeness was totally unacceptable. It obviously shows that this restaurant employed its staff in an apathetic manner without proper screening and worse still offered little or no training to them!

Can't companies understand that without proper training and education they will never have good customer service skills for their frontline staff?

When customers come across such appalling service, it reflects not just on the waiter but the whole establishment. And it puts off customers!

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