NCL Dawn

Wow, so sorry you had a bad experience. There is really no excuse for any off the staff to be rude. I am used to passengers being rude, but not the staff. I have not sailed on NCL for a couple of years, hope this does not become a trend.

Customer service is trained,  it comes from the top and works it way down.  Long, long ago I was in retail management (when going to university).  When the store got new cashiers I was in charge of training them,  amazing I had to train them to say "Please and Thank you" I would drive it into them so that it was automatic.  It was just part of the script so they all said it without even thinking of it.   It makes a big difference to the customer.  I had to remind them with out the customers,  they would not have a job.

I have noticed that customer service and crew moral is different on each ship, even if in the same line.   On the NCL Star bad service and not great crew,  on the NCL Pearl we had good service very friendly crew.

Since cruising is a service industry, customer service is most important.  Just having a smile on your face and greeting a passenger is not the end of customer service.  It is just the start.  Good to read that at least  the food, room and ports were all good.

I realize that many of the employees come from parts of the world that are very different from ours; however, the same is true with the employees of Carnival, and we did not experience the rudeness with Carnival that we did with NCL.  This was not an isolated incident either.  It happened over and over-daily and for some reason more to my wife than it did to me.  She is the nicest, sweetest woman alive-to everyone.

I do think the senior management did a very nice job modeling for the employees; they were very nice.  This took place mainly in the buffet area.  

So very true, Cruising CM. I am a sales rep for a very large electrical wholesaler, when I was hired one question was, "What is my daily priority?" My response was The Customer.

Many staff members in all industries do not realize, or are never taught that where there is no buyer for any product or services, there is no seller. Some corporations have a bit of trouble with that concept over the one that gives them a short term boost in profits for share shareholders to share and to make up their bonus packages, at the same time reducing service and product quality. Promising new and better service only helps in the short term, especially when they fail to keep said promises. I believe that all the Extra charges and fees we will be seeing in the future are indicative of the need for higher profits, and not as claimed, a move toward better service.

I've noticed that when senior management of a ship does not set an example of customer service excellence by simply keeping a smile on one's face and greeting each guest with at least a hello, then crew members have no benchmark to work by... no standard to aspire to. They tend to go about their work as if it is simply a way to make money, in other words - it's just a job. 

People don't innately know what excellent customer service is   but we sure know bad service when we see it. I think about where many of the crew come from to lend some perspective. Think about it, some are from parts of the world where day-to-day life is harder than any of us will likely ever know. 

Ensuring a high quality customer experience is not something that gets taught once and that's it.  It needs to be consistently modeled and reinforced. Failure in front line customer service is a reflection of leadership as much as it is a failure of the crew.

Thanks

Thanks!