BARBADIANS still have a long way to go in terms of service excellence.
In a politeness test survey conducted by the National Initiative for Service Excellence (NISE) under the Readers Digest formula, Barbados could do no better than fourth with a modest 68 per cent score.
At a Press briefing yesterday, NISE chief executive officer Kim Tudor admitted that much still had to be done.
New York was ranked as the most polite of the 35 cities polled, scoring 80 per cent, with Zurich second at 77 per cent and Toronto third on 70.
Barbados is fourth with Berlin, Sao Paolo and Zagreb.
The tests dealt with responses to opening the door, retrieving documents dropped by others and thank you acknowledgements.
“Barbados did quite well with the door; 89 per cent of the persons surveyed held the door open for the persons following them and we didn’t do well on the drop tests with 61 per cent of the persons helping you with a package.
“Where we fell down badly was on the service test; only 57 per cent of the times were you thanked for your purchase,” she said.
Tudor said the limited thank yous were in the supermarkets and at service stations.
“So it appears that it doesn’t cost you much to hold the door open but it does cost you more time and effort to help someone pick up their package, so we are not as likely to do it as we should.
“That is why we are in fourth place, way down from New York, way down from Zurich and way down from Toronto.
“That is no comfort to me, managing NISE and encouraging people to implement service excellence,” Tudor added.
“The cities that we are ranked with – Zagreb and Berlin – aren’t known for service excellence and don’t depend on industries like tourism so I would imagine that if we are going to build our tourism industry in a competitive environment, we certainly have to do much better in terms of politeness,” she said.
