Lim Rui Qi Jessica
Temasek Polytechnic
Leisure & Resort Management
0703222J
T13
Business Etiquette & Service Excellence BHT2008

Mr. Fernando Arroyo Fassio

Building a Service Culture

Environment shapes behaviour and company’s vision and mission is like a skeleton of
human body. It builds up the structure of the company, gives employees a direction and
creates a perception in customers’ mind. The case study of Land’s End clearly illustrates the
importance of having good relationship between the company’s vision and their employees
and also service guarantees and customers. Happy employees will lead to happy
customers; therefore we have to treat employees like real customers, empower and
reward them.

In the second part of this module, I learnt about the 4 steps to customer satisfaction and
understand the cost to pay if a customer is lost. Therefore, it is important to have a very
good service recovery plan. (e.g. complimentary tickets given, follow-up with customers)

After the pre-workshop individual assignment to research on specific company's service
culture, I compare the findings with my group mates and we realised that company from
different industry have different service standards. In addition, most successful companies
(e.g Ritz Carlton) will encourage feedback from customers in order to improve in their
service standards. Therefore, we can see that service standards play an important role in
showing the customer care each company has.

Excellent service is the first step towards success of your company.

“The Art of Corporate Entertainment”, the name of this topic itself has appeared to be so unique as compared to the others like “Customers’ Perception” and “Corporate Politics in Perspective”. It tells me that all in all, the process of meeting your corporate associate is an art. True enough, this is not something that you can learn from book easily.

I like the different mode of teaching that the lecturers have came up with. Example, the video specially produced for this topic, showing the ‘should do’ and ‘should not do’ in a dining setting had made a really deep impression in me. The comical actions of the lecturers were still clear in my mind, i.e. the napkin tucked in his belt. During the class workshop, Mr. Fernando had brought a set of dining utensils to let us observe their position and the different uses.

The self-directed learning assignment given to us was a great learning experience. In the process of enjoying the meal, we learnt a lot and took down notes of the dining etiquette that my group mates have made. Their mistake was a valuable lesson to us (e.g. MUST stand when our guest stands up) and we have also learnt from their correct dining etiquette (e.g. do not talk when mouth is full).

Ask yourself, how many times do you actually practice the correct social etiquette? Many times when the atmosphere becomes informal (especially with your friends around) we tend to forget about our etiquette. One may not even realise that they have neglected the importance of presenting themselves well. There may be only you and your close friends, thus you think that there is no need to have extra attention on your behaviour. But never forget that you are still in a public setting. Who knows, the person sitting next to your table when you comb your hair at the table may be your superior or business associate!

After this workshop, I learnt to be more sensitive of my dining etiquette. E.g. Placing my fork and spoon parallel to each other at 4 o’clock position. I share knowledge with my outside friends and we had fun reading through my notes and studying the table settings. We even tried to exercise those practices and learnt while we enjoy each other companion; it was really a very interesting learning process. Since then, I have become more particular of my dining etiquette!