I read an article about the Tourism Board of France
working to make customer service in Paris better in the International Herald Tribune by Liz Alderman earlier this week. In my last two trips to France this year, I did encounter what you could call “bad service” in Paris, and one of the (two) experiences was in no less than when we wanted to have
macarons and afternoon coffee at the iconic Ladurée on Champs-Élysées.
At the same time, I was impressed by the customer service at the five star boutique hotels in Paris. I stayed at the
Hôtel Montalembert and
Hotel Westminster and both offered the five star customer service without being stuffy or me feeling overwhelmed by overflowing kindness of eagerness to do things for me. But as an European, my views on what is good or bad customer service can be very different than for example many Americans’.
See – I am not just European, I am an independent Scandinavian woman, and when any man asks me
“can I carry your luggage” I immediately feel an urge to say
“why? You think I can’t handle it?” and it has taken me years of practice and ten years of living in the USA to gracefully say
“thank you very much, that would be great”.
At the same time it’s the Scandinavian in me that doesn’t want to leave a big tip to the waitress at the restaurants, it’s just not common in my culture. Now – hear me before you judge me here – the waitresses in Finland, where I come from, make around 17 dollars per hour (according to the labor union recommendations), and they also get paid extra if they work during evening hours (after 6), weekends, nights, Holidays or Sundays and they have close to 5 (paid) weeks of vacation annually, just like everyone else. That’s a big difference what waitresses make in the USA, with no extra pay and no paid vacations. The article at
Bloomberg states that the state minimum for waitresses in the state of New Mexico is $2.13 and in California $6.75. The tips are vital for their livelihood.
I think it’s important that both the tourism industry and the travelers alike understand that there are cultural differences between the provider of the service and the customer. It is bad customer service not to even try to understand the cultural backgrounds of your customers and it is equally rude to visit different countries/cultures without knowing anything about them. Ignorance makes a terrible travel companion, and on the end it does the most harm to your own travel experience.
I can still vividly remember my first restaurant visit in the US in 1998. I had been dating with my now husband only for a few months and we were sitting in a steak house and I was completely overwhelmed by waitress and her bubbly talk and the amount of daily choices, the salad dressing options, and what did the baked potato come with and I did not understand why on the earth the waitress had been visiting our table several times before we even got our food (
was she hitting on my man?). And even after I got my dish, she managed to come back and ask
“how is everything tasting”, before I had even tasted anything! I was completely appalled by her
bad customer service, she was not leaving us alone! I was fondly remembering the Italian restaurant we had been eating at in Germany just a few months before, where we had had our romantic discussions, held hands and just glazed each others in the eyes. The waitress was nowhere found and I had no idea how she looked like, or what her name was. To me it had been the perfect night, but my (American) husband reminded me, to him
that had been bad customer service.
I realized the differences between the cultural expectations what good customer service is, and I realized I was being a
Snobby European in an American restaurant.
I am not opposing the French Tourism Board teaching Parisians a thing or two about friendly service to the millions of the tourists heading to the city of lights each year, but I am also suggesting you not to be the
Ugly American or the
Snobby European, when you visit places. There is no easier way to ruin your own vacation that complaining about the bad customer service. Especially, when the person serving you might think she is just doing her job the way people expect her to, in her own country.
Oh, and don’t forget to find out about the tipping policy of each place you visit.
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