Monday, July 14, 2008

A&W horrible language proficiency

I'm writing this post regarding the branch at 1-Utama.

As written earlier, I shall resume my Ripple Effect Series.


It's such a shame that in other countries, fast food restaurants are known for having standards such as their quality of food and services.

As consumers, one of the most vital aspect in a F&B business is communication. Restaurants need to communicate with us as consumers to know what we want devour for the day. Otherwise, we might as well go to 7-11 and grab a maggi mee hot cup.

(couldn't go too near to snap a direct shot of their faces)

It's forgivable if the employee at the counter is new and has difficulty coping with the orders of the consumer.

It's forgivable if the neighbouring employee is also new and couldn't help much to understand what the consumer is trying to order.

BUT, it's not forgivable if every single employee in the branch cannot understand what you're trying to order. What worse, the manager is not at his/her position to ensure that everything is going according to what a consumer expect to experience in a restaurant - a decent customer service.

You speak to them in english, they speak to you back in malay.

"Hi, i'm dining in."

"Oh okay. You nak order set mana?"

You can seriously try to insist them on speaking english, but to no avail.

" I would like to order a mozza burger set."

"You nak regular atau large?"

Frustrating as it is, if that's not bad enough, what happened to me and my gf was that the portion they gave us was ridiculously little. At least, not according to how much we paid for.

"Can you adjust the portion of the fries? It's too little."

"Apa? You nak order extra fries?"

"No, I'm requesting that you add more fries because it's too little. It's not what I paid for."

They would start putting their fingers on the machine, preparing to key in "one more regular fries".

It's frustrating enough that you cannot communicate with a toddler and want the toddler to cooperate with you on certain requests.

But it's a catastrophe to not able to communicate what you want to an ADULT on SIMPLE requests.


I urge my readers, please take that bold step to make a change. If they do not get you what you want, DON'T LET THEM compromise your requests!

Insist they you want to see the manager or someone who can actually understand english. Make sure you get what you paid for. Stop having that mindset of "It's malaysia lah, what to do.. nothing can be done about it.."

It's due to this mindset that our customer service in Malaysia is never improving but always deteriorating.

Thanks for your time, please do continue to tune in my series.

God bless, cheers.

6 comments:

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Anonymous said...

1. "...in other countries, fast food restaurants... standards such as their quality of food and services."

Noooowaaaayyyy! Fast food in UK/US is terrible. Malaysia is fast food heaven mannn. You even get bigger portions here.

2. Though I kind of agree that it's kinda vexing when an employee doesn't speak good English, I also have to stress the fact that Bahasa Melayu bahasa kebangsaan kita... so apa salahnya seseorang pekerja berbahasa Melayu, dan mengapakah perlu kita mendesak supaya mereka berbahasa Inggeris pula? (padahal sbg rakyat M'sia kita sepatutnya menguasai bhs kebangsaan?) They probably understand some English. They probably just aren't used to people throwing really long questions at them. Next time try "put some more fries inside the packet".

4. I hate to bug people about this (or not?), but complaints tend to come across as ridiculous when the claimant him/herself doesn't display the standards he/she seems to be insisting upon.


But yah. Write a letter! Wahahahaha. Or something. And don't forget to include something like "why your root beer no more gas!?" because I really hate un-fizzy root beer :(

s u n d a e said...

I'm a hypocrite now?

Anonymous said...

Iland 192:32 "Hydra"
"A snake wouldn't be a cobra unless it shed its skin"

Anonymous said...

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very bold post fh! loved reading it, and i strongly agree! :D

s u n d a e said...

haha thanks cheez :)

we should go meet up for a drink. Enjoyed the post about the dark knight, lol