It was a beautiful Sunday mid-morning. The yachts-gleaming white vessels, some of them the size of small onland homes-were bobbing gently in the water down at Crews Inn in Chaguaramas. The sun had that "Maracas-here-I-come" feel. We, myself and two wonderful neighbours and friends, Nalini and her husband Steve, took an outside patio table, not wanting to waste the ambience. We were looking forward to brunch: hot whipped-cream-topped coffee, double-decked sandwiches and great conversation. That picturesque image was not to be. The company was more than fine as was the atmosphere. What spoiled it all was the service at this cafe. First, it must have taken about 20 minutes before a waitress showed up. She was more sour than unsweetened sorrel. Not a sunny smile, no "good morning," nothing. Her demeanour suggested that we were imposing on her by showing up there to give our business to this eatery.
When I ordered a tuna sandwich and told her very gently that it didn't matter whether the order came on white or whole wheat bread, she muttered something that I can't remember, but it sounded impolite. Then when an order of hot chocolate did arrive, it was less than steaming hot. The waitress was just as sullen in her treatment of the English yachting couple next to us, and they come to Trinidad for months at a time. Steve wanted to leave. I did, too. Nalini, who owns a food business and for whom customer service is a watch word, was upset, but she's the type not to show it. Instead, after the discourteous waitress left, Nalini got to talking about a young woman she had hired, but had to let go after one month because her customers complained of bad service from her. Nalini said she was willing to give the employee a break as she came from difficult circumstances at home, but she could not tolerate bad customer service, without which many small businesses fail. Needless to say, the waitress did not get a tip. All she had to do was smile and chat with us, come back after we had received our order to make sure we were okay.
Bad customer service exists everywhere in T&T. That's why many times when business people say sales are slow, I'm not surprised. If a customer enters your business, it may mean they are interested in something. Their presence is an opportunity to pique their interest, and if they are in shopping mode, then it's another opportunity to get them interested in your merchandise, and yet another to close a sale before they walk out. You go to the market, vendors abuse the customers, giving them short weight, tipping the scale with their hand as if that's how a scale is supposed to work. Last week Wednesday, a woman at a bakery gave the attendant her order. Not hearing it properly, the attendant said, "Come again?" I don't know if it's my upbringing, but the days of "please" and "thank you" or "pardon me," seem to have vanished. To my mind, if the Tourism Development Corporation, Trinidad Hotels, Restaurants and Tourism Association and the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association want tourists to visit T&T, work harder at getting your stakeholders to train people to be nice, to smile, to give good service. Tourism stakeholders talk about marketing, advertising and promotion, but not about on-the-ground treatment of guests.
Let me put it this way. Visitors nowadays have a global village to choose from to spend their hard-earned money. If I were planning a holiday, why would I come to T&T, with its filthy neighbourhoods and drains and unhygienic food outlets, when I can go to places like unspoiled St Lucia or beautiful Cancun in Mexico, where people understand the concept of service, good treatment to the point of pampering guests. The potential of tourist attractions like Chaguaramas and the Caroni Bird Sanctuary is limitless. Except that we don't know what to do with the raw product. How about cleaning up the place? How about cutting the grass? How about breaking down unsightly abandoned structures? I'm paraphrasing here, but I remember Sandals Resorts' owner, Gordon "Butch" Stewart once saying that there's not much else his chain of fine hotels could offer vacationers except to anticipate their every need and respond. We are way behind even understanding what that concept means in T&T. One day we will be able to distinguish service from servitude. Until then, we have to contend with sour service.
Sandra Chouthi
Roystonia, Couva