An interpersonal communication problem that occurred to my
supervisor and I was during my four month internship at Equarius hotel while
working at the concierge. As an assistant concierge, one of my duties was to
handle transport services where I have to display an excellent knowledge of the
resort’s transportation services in handling inquiries and efficiency in
arranging transportation requests with accuracy to ensure that guests are
provided with the required services.
As Equarius Hotel is under the purview of Resort’s World
Sentosa (RWS), most of the guest enquiries are routed through RWS call centres
located in either Singapore or Manila. During that particular incident, I was
attending to a guest’s transportation needs as I picked up the call from the
concierge desk, a lady from Manila spoke to me and requested to help arrange
for an airport limousine arrival transfer for an Ocean Suite guest. The message
was relayed in broken English and I could barely make out what she is saying.
After some attempts, I managed to obtain some important information
that is essential to make a successful booking, such as the guest’s flight
number and time, date of arrival and terminal location. I have also indicated
such request in the property management system. With no other means of
contacting the overseas guest and the call centre in Manila, there is no other
way to confirm the information at a later time.
Thankfully the guest arrived at the hotel as planned, and
proceeded to stay at the Ocean Suite. However, the problem started to surface
when the guest checked out of the hotel. It also happened that it was my off
day during that time. My manager thus handled the guest’s enquiry. As they were
Japanese guests, their communication with the manager was also weak as they
could not speak proper English. According to my manager, the guests said “My
car, where? To Airport?” . At first my manager thought that the guest wanted us
to book a taxi to the airport. However, she was expecting a departure limousine
transfer.
As my manager could not locate any bookings for a departure
limousine transfer, she immediately called me on my off day to clarify the incident,
as I was the one who handled the arrival booking. After several rounds of
questioning, it turns out to be a miscommunication between the call centre
agent in Manila and the guest, as well as the information being relayed to me
during the previous call. The call centre agent might have heard from the guest
wrongly, or the guest did not actually specify a departure booking at all.
Whatever the case was, the mistake still falls on our side
as we had failed to deliver a service as promised (or as claimed by the guest).
The Japanese guest was furious and demanded to have the limousine transfer.
They were also unable to fit into a taxi because they were a family of six with
many baggage. Therefore, the concierge had to actually arrange an emergency
limousine service at the very last minute for the guest. Nevertheless, their
trip was delayed for quite some time and they almost missed their flight back
to Japan.
Reflecting back on this incident, I had realised the
importance of clear and coherent interpersonal communication, especially on the
verbal communication aspects as neither the call centre agent nor the guest
were able to speak English fluently. Therefore, how should I have handled such
guest requests? Is there a need to remove the intermediary? (ie. the call
centre in Manila). What could I have done differently to avoid such situation?
