Monday, February 20, 2017

What should I do?

I remember a time when I was still working for the guest services department at Resorts World Sentosa. The resort is famous for attracting tourists from all around the world, from different social class, race, religion, ethnicity etc.

I was stationed at the guest services counter situated in an area with high traffic volume. The resort was conducting an island-wide survey about their guests service experience and satisfaction level, and I was tasked to spearhead this initiative. As part of the completion of a survey, guests were given a Resorts World gift bag, containing water bottles, gift vouchers etc.

A lot of visitors come from India and most of them travel in big tour groups. There was a huge communication breakdown while I was conducting the survey as most of them had problem expressing and communicating in english. There was a problem in explaining to them that they had to complete the survey to be entitled to the gifts. They were also insisting that we hand out the gift bags to them and this led to a huge commotion that gathered alot of people. Some wanted to enquire about the freebies while some were queuing to take the survey. I was overwhelmed by the number of people that were trying to attract my attention at different directions.

What should I do?

6 comments:

  1. Dear Roy,

    Thank you posting such a real situation. I can almost imagine how I would feel if I'm in your situation. I have some recommendations here for you!
    In my opinion, I think it would be good for you to communicate to one of the guests in the tour group. After which, get the guest to translate this information to the rest of them. It will be good if there are other staff around that can speak Tamil.
    Secondly, you can choose to give the goodie bags only when everyone has done the survey, so that no confusion will be created. Guests that choose not to take the survey will not receive the goodie bag.
    Lastly, it is important to apply the concept of intercultural communications in this aspect. They tend to shake their head when they agree on something, which is a contrary to our culture. We usually nod our heads in agreement.
    I hope this helps you! Hopefully it doesn't happen again!


    Best regards,
    Michelle

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  2. Dear Michelle,

    Thank you for your prompt reply. I appreciate the well-thought out response and solution to this problem. I believe understanding intercultural differences is essential especially in a multi-racial/cultural environment. Different people react and behaviour different to differing situations. I will take this on board and keep it in mind when I encounter similar situations in the future again.

    Regards,
    Roy

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  3. Dear Roy,

    I enjoyed reading your post as I very much can relate to your situation as a guest services staff and what you had to put up with. And I agree with how the repercussion of the situation made you feel, as communication barrier is a huge obstacle a guest services staff face on a daily basis.

    Similar with what Michelle highlighted, I also agree that it would be best if you had seek the help of a Tamil speaking staff before the situation got a little out of hand. As a guest services staff, you could also utilise your empowerment to suggest to the management to put up notices in different languages since the exercise was large scale and involved a lot of guests from different nationalities.

    Additionally, I feel that I would be fair if the management rendered more headcount in manning the survey counters since Resorts World experiences heavy human traffic on a daily basis. This would have spared you some trouble having to deal with so many requests at one time.

    I hope this helps to resolve the situation!

    Best Regards,
    Inqa

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  4. I = 'it' would be fair in the last paragraph

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  5. Thanks, Roy, for posting this real-world problem. Your description is clear and concise. It also involves an interesting intercultural element.

    You've received some appropriate feedback.

    The only problem, as I mentioned in class, seems to be that the time signature is incorrect. Let me explain: When I checked your blog over the course of the last week, the post never appeared---until today. Better late than never though!

    By the way, how might you now settle the problem yourself, taking into consideration your experience, the learning from your peers and info on the website you read in class?

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  6. Upon reviewing the comments and situation posted last week, I believe that understanding intercultural differences is extremely important. Although I have never been to India, nor exposed frequently to citizens from the country, it is important to bare in mind that we are all different as human beings. We all have different coping mechanisms in reacting to different situations and in relation to this problem I posted last week, it is evident that I was foreign to that form of behaviour.

    Ultimately, I believe the universal method on resolving these situation is to handle all problems faced with a calm and positive attitude. Good positive energy rubs off on the people around you and it affects the way they view your service provided to them

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