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Sunday, August 3, 2008


chapter 2: customers' perception

This topic focuses mainly on our customers. Being in the hospitality industry, customers would be our most important assets. This chapter was not new to me as it is not my first time studying on our customers. We had already completed modules like “Introduction to Hospitality and Tourism” and “Principles of Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism” previously in Year 1. Customer satisfaction, service recovery, service gaps and complaints are already deeply analyzed in the previous modules.

However, the most interesting topic I had come across in customer perception is the 7 deadly statements never ever to say to your customers. What makes it more interesting was having a role-play during workshops. Ms Mak asked each group to act out each of the 7 deadly statements and this really deepens our understanding to this topic. One sentence I find it particularly interesting is:
Customers are not always right. But customers are still customers.

Just in case you are wondering, these are the 7 deadly statements never to say to your customers:
1) I am having a terrible day today.
2) We are short staffed today.
3) This is the third time this week we are having system problems.
4) The last customer was really a pain.
5) My co-worker messed up.
6) This job is really hard.
7) I only work here part-time.

Being in the service industry myself, I have been trying hard to tell myself never to resort to these 7 deadly statements during service. For your information, I am currently a customer sales associate in Spring Maternity since April 2007. There were times when I was really in a bad mood or no mood to work, but after realizing the importance of customers, I promise to myself to try to give my best to my customers.

Unfortunately, I did told my customers before statement number 3 last year. I was really not aware that telling customers we are experiencing system problems was 1 of the 7 deadly statements. After learning about the 7 deadly statements, I will only choose to apologize to customers for the delay and not breathe a word about technical problems.

Important lesson learnt: never resort to the 7 deadly statements and this will help us provide excellent customer service. Customers will then be satisfied and a good perception would be created. Customer loyalty can then be enhanced.

An interesting video to share with everyone on excellent customer service:



I was really impressed with the airline staffs as they really went all out to the customer just to tell him “It’s a boy”. I strive to become such a fantastic service provider too (:

Posted by STEFFI at 6:42 AM