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Hong Kong is well known as a “shoppers’ paradise”

ang Jiying, a 20-year-old “Once I entered the restaurant, to promote and encourage quality
Chinese student, who the waiter told me to step aside if I customer service in Hong Kong in
Wstudies in the United was not ready to make an order,” Lin 2002. The tag line in the advertise-
Kingdom, travelled to Hong Kong says. He was shocked a n d ment, “Service like this just isn’t good
earlier this year. High expectation of felt unwelcomed. enough in today’s business environ-
her Hong Kong visit turned out to be “It seemed like ment”, has become proverbial to every
very disappointing. he did not care Hongkonger. However, after nearly
“The service quality in Hong Kong about losing a two decades since the advertisement
is terrible,” Wang complains after vis- customer,” he was first aired, the city still fails to
iting a restaurant. “No one came to says. serve tourists with a friendly smile.
serve when my friend Both Wang Hong Kong ranks the fourth low-
and I entered a des- and Lin vow they est in the 2019 Smiling Report, a sur-
sert restaurant, so will never visit Lin Shih-hsiung vey which was compiled based on
we had no choice Hong Kong again. assessments of mystery shoppers in
but to hail the wait- 29 countries and regions. The smile
ress. Shockingly, Service without a smile score, from 0 to 100, grades quality of
she responded by The government launched a cam- customer service. Hong Kong’s smile
throwing a menu on paign featuring pop star Andy Lau score was only 56, 10 points lower
Wang Ji-ying the table,” she vividly
recalls.
Wang’s bad experience about ser-
vice quality of restaurants in the city
was not an isolated case. Lin Shih-hsi-
ung, a Taiwanese tourist who visited
Hong Kong two years ago, had similar
experience at a chain restaurant. He
says a waiter was very impatient and
unfriendly when he tried to order his Neitizens voted Hong Kong as their most hated city in the world in a survery conduct-
food. ed by PTT, the biggest online forum in Taiwan
Screen capture from a discussion of the PTT forum