"This might be YOUR vacation, but it's MY life"

[grapau27]

I hold up my index finger and say "You're number 1 with me".

Do you want a tip or a 10 ?.

[Aquahound]

I just want to say something that happened on one of my cruises on rccl ship. I like to have those frozen drinks while watching the shows. I am aware that the tip is included in the drinks at 18% when purchased. I think thats enough. But every night in the show auditorium one waitress made me feel so special. She actually remembered my name and came by my seat and asked me if i wanted to order anything. She was so good at her job that i gave her an additional tip every time she waited on me. This was extraordinary service. I was very impressed.

 

That is the type of service that is worthy of rating a perfect 10. Instead of just going through the motions, she went the extra mile, made a little more money and if you mentioned her in your review, might be on her way to a higher position. And once she makes that higher position, she can train others to work with the same ethic. That's when the system works....not when people rate 10s for mediocre service.

[the mistral wind]

That is the type of service that is worthy of rating a perfect 10. Instead of just going through the motions, she went the extra mile, made a little more money and if you mentioned her in your review, might be on her way to a higher position. And once she makes that higher position, she can train others to work with the same ethic. That's when the system works....not when people rate 10s for mediocre service.

 

Yes, that's exactly what i am trying to say.

Its something you merit. Some are not worthy of even the suggested tip. But i do it anyway. I would also like to commend a member of rank who overheard me saying that the salmon was missing from the breakfast buffet. I love lox in the morning. He told one of the servers at the buffet to go get it from the dinning room for her. I think that was very nice. Husband like to eat in the buffet area i like MDR. MDR had salmon but the buffet didn't.

[the mistral wind]

How about ' my cousin,uncle brother in law is the CEO of RC.

 

i noticed on my last cruise they only have you submit survey online. No more cards with ###'s

I think the polite way of answering someone would be.

I will respond in a truthful manner.

[the mistral wind]

i noticed on my last cruise they only have you submit survey online. No more cards with ###'s

I think the polite way of answering someone would be.

I will respond in a truthful manner.

 

however; i did like your reply

[grapau27]

however; i did like your reply

Thanks.

Funnily enough on our first family cruise October 2003 (3 nights)on P&O Aurora the wait staff were very arrogant so we said our father in law who was with us was high up in P&O and wow what a difference they literally couldn't do enough for us.

[JustLoveToGetAway]

Does anyone have a short, cutting-but-courteous, reply that will cut off such pleading? Something that makes it clear that pleading itself wipes away the effect of most of the good service already provided.

 

Other threads I've recently read in other cruise line forums, going back a decade, make me wonder whether the standard gratuities on all mainstream cruise lines always included room service,. While "the tip is included" is what we've heard about room service after this change, perhaps what is meant by that is that the tip has always been included and that this fee is a new fee for convenience and/or revenue enhancement and/or truly is going toward upgrading the quality of the offerings.

I saw this response to the spiel elsewhere & am ready to use it: "You already have all 5s! Now it's your job to maintain that."

 

Brilliant. Finesse & food handling work well together for all involved.

 

Regarding tipping in general: one of the first things I do after boarding & unpacking is head to Guest Services & have the Gratuitous Gratuity taken off. (You'd be surprised how many passengers aren't aware this is negotiable - everything is. Nobody ever blinks at the request.) As the sole recipient of service in this equation, I alone will decide whether I tip, as well as who gets what & how much. My tips are always cash & whatever they declare, share, or don't doesn't interest me.

 

The hustling starts not with my tip, but with the staff working for them - and you know what? I'm usually happy as a clam on all the lines I cruise. Still insist on tipping an amount commensurate with service. 😎

 

5/14/17: Royal Caribbean, Liberty of the Seas

9/25/17: Norwegian Jade, Path of the Vikings

[grapau27]

I saw this response to the spiel elsewhere & am ready to use it: "You already have all 5s! Now it's your job to maintain that."

 

Brilliant. Finesse & food handling work well together for all involved.

 

Regarding tipping in general: one of the first things I do after boarding & unpacking is head to Guest Services & have the Gratuitous Gratuity taken off. (You'd be surprised how many passengers aren't aware this is negotiable - everything is. Nobody ever blinks at the request.) As the sole recipient of service in this equation, I alone will decide whether I tip, as well as who gets what & how much. My tips are always cash & whatever they declare, share, or don't doesn't interest me.

 

The hustling starts not with my tip, but with the staff working for them - and you know what? I'm usually happy as a clam on all the lines I cruise. Still insist on tipping an amount commensurate with service. 😎

 

5/14/17: Royal Caribbean, Liberty of the Seas

9/25/17: Norwegian Jade, Path of the Vikings

Do you ever encounter poorer service or anything else from the crew by stopping your autograuities?.

[nealstuber]

My waiter and cabin steward both mentioned this to me on my last cruise. I responded that they had nothing to worry about, they had done a great job. They were both very polite and soft handed in the manner of their request.

 

I understand this method of these customer service ratings. My own employer uses the same process. A four on a five scale is the same as a zero. The point is to provide excellent service that warrants a top score.

 

 

If I gave a 5 in any category on my last cruise and this time whatever it was was not as good, the score will be lower.

 

If someone does a better job than someone else, it's a disservice to the person who did a great job to give a mediocre performer the same score.

 

Also, we sail Celebrity from time to time. We expect the food and service to be better on that line and it usually is. But we can't use a 6 for Celebrity to indicate that these things were better than they were on Royal. Now when it comes to the Value for money question, we'll usually rate Royal higher.

 

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Edited May 14, 2017 by nealstuber

[nealstuber]

Also, I take the time to do the surveys in an effort to make the product better, not hand out "participation trophies".

 

With respect to the service categories, they could save themselves a whole bunch of survey reading and employee counseling if they just made it easy to adjust the tips up or down.

 

I love the convince of not having to bring cash for tips at the end of the cruise, but the service was better before this was rolled out. And they didn't need this elaborate system to keep the service guys on track.

 

 

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[CP3o]

I work for a large box retail company who has stores in almost every state. We have the surveys too. On most all surveys, a non 5 score is considered a zero. Service was very good but not excellent? Some people will give a 4 and think it is a good score. It is scored a zero. Corporate office bases everything off these scores.

 

And that's the crazy part, can't averages be calculated? The rest of the world doesn't work that way. Our kids don't fail out of school by getting B's but would if got zeros. Would be more useful to retain all scores and be able to calculate an overall 4.6 versus 3.4 and make judgments from there.

[pharmdawg]

I agree. It is what's wrong with retail America

 

 

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[grapau27]

And that's the crazy part, can't averages be calculated? The rest of the world doesn't work that way. Our kids don't fail out of school by getting B's but would if got zeros. Would be more useful to retain all scores and be able to calculate an overall 4.6 versus 3.4 and make judgments from there.

Excellent should be 5 very good 4 and anything else a fail.It is not fair that someone is very good but not excellent and you either give 5 or RC class it as zero.

[Tudorcruisers]

It seems very unfair that our views on the quality of food if scored lower than 5 can impact on the server. I really hope RCCL read these posts and things change. I would have felt very uncomfortable if the server had said that to me.

[richstowe]

 

With respect to the service categories, they could save themselves a whole bunch of survey reading and employee counseling if they just made it easy to adjust the tips up or down.

 

I love the convince of not having to bring cash for tips at the end of the cruise, but the service was better before this was rolled out. And they didn't need this elaborate system to keep the service guys on track.

 

 

Is your point that the amount of tips corresponds to the quality of service and customer satisfaction ?

I haven't seen this . The correlation between tips amounts and service levels is weak . The clearest correlation is that big tippers tip well , poor tippers tip poorly .;p

 

Perhaps service was better when tips were given directly and not as part of a predetermined tipping pool , I'm not sure . I do believe the stories here on CC that there were lots of empty seats in the MDR on the final night back in the day when that's when you tipped your servers .

 

Having (long ago) worked in a tipping job , I was amazed how the most difficult customers could often be the cheapest .Equally , the kindest easiest customers were often very generous .

[gpb]

The problem is that many people thing 3 = good, 4 = great 5 = once in a lifetime experience.

 

But corporate thinks 3 = fail, 4 = fail, 5 = pass

 

And fail = punishment, lost wages, or being fired.

 

This is exactly the way I was taught (required!) to complete performance reviews in media, and also the way I am reviewed now as a leadership workshop facilitator. Indeed, my own employee reviews would be sent back if I gave too many 4s or 5s because, as my former editor would say, "near perfect is not often possible, and perfect is nearly divine."

 

How terrible that RCL doesn't really want honest feedback, and that employees are driven to beg for good marks. I hope corporate reads the comments, at least, because those are probably more honest than the rankings.

[the mistral wind]

I agree. It is what's wrong with retail America

 

 

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I see you cruised on the Brittanis wasn't that a fun cruise. We loved that old ship and the service and the food was good as we'LL i think it was about the same time you cruised on the that ship. i just noticed your signature with your cruise experience.Our cabin was so small but we had a lot of laughs

[JimAOk1945]

I usually book a GS or above and it seems like the pleading for high marks never ends. However, the one time I booked a JS we received the same excellent service but much less pleading! I don't know whether having a JS made a difference or not but that's what happened!

 

I get really annoyed with the asking for high marks and reminders about the post cruise survey. I like the suggestions given here and plan to use them on future cruises!

[Crusingdiva62]

Reading another thread, I was reminded by what the assistant waiter said on my last cruise.

 

We did not find the food in the MDR on our last cruise to be all that great, and frequently left over. The crew would ask if they could bring us something else, and I just said no, we would grab a slice of pizza or something from the cafe.

 

One night, the assistant waiter came by and confirmed with us that we would be giving all 5s on the Guest Satisfaction survey - for service, food, etc. I told him of course we would give 5s for service, but we did not find the food to be "5" caliber. He said it didn't matter, we should give 5 for everything, and then write what we did not like in the comments. I told him that would not be my honest opinion, and he stressed that I needed to give 5s for everything, even the food. He then said, "This might be YOUR vacation, but it's MY life". It was really chilling, and I felt quite uncomfortable.

 

What do you make of this, and what would you have done? I am embarrassed to say that I did not complete the survey because of his words. I could not give all 5s for food that I found to be sub-par, but I did not want to affect this guy's livelihood.

 

I know a lot of companies use the surveys as a way to weed out employees, If you give anything other than the top score 5 in some cases 10 it is seen as a negative and getting to many score less than 5 or 10 can get people fired. I have seen it happen in a insurance company I worked for.

[nealstuber]

Is your point that the amount of tips corresponds to the quality of service and customer satisfaction ?

I haven't seen this . The correlation between tips amounts and service levels is weak . The clearest correlation is that big tippers tip well , poor tippers tip poorly .;p

 

Perhaps service was better when tips were given directly and not as part of a predetermined tipping pool , I'm not sure . I do believe the stories here on CC that there were lots of empty seats in the MDR on the final night back in the day when that's when you tipped your servers .

 

Having (long ago) worked in a tipping job , I was amazed how the most difficult customers could often be the cheapest .Equally , the kindest easiest customers were often very generous .

 

 

My point is RCCL would not have to being doing correlations that include the outliers you cite if they just stayed out of it and made it easier for us to tip more or less.

 

A good waiter or steward would understand for every demanding poor tipper there is a pleasant good tipper and make hay with the folks in the middle. The bad waiters or stewards would starve and go away.

 

I'd like to think these surveys are used to help the company make strategic decision at high levels. Sounds like they are using them to more to make tactical employee retention decisions which are as useless as the standardized test we used to evaluate teachers in our education system. Our teachers and students spend a large portion of their time prepping for these tests when it would be so much simpler to find out who the good 5th grade teachers are by asking the 6th grade teachers.

 

 

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[HolyCityGamecock]

They do the same at the car dealership when it comes to service.

 

I always mark all 5s, but, in the comment section, I always tell them what really wasn't a 5 and what was wrong.

 

 

Next Cruise: RCL Independence of the Seas, 4/20/2019

First Cruise: Carnival Victory, 4/17/2017

[pharmdawg]

I see you cruised on the Brittanis wasn't that a fun cruise. We loved that old ship and the service and the food was good as we'LL i think it was about the same time you cruised on the that ship. i just noticed your signature with your cruise experience.Our cabin was so small but we had a lot of laughs

It was my first cruise. I have been addicted ever since. The food was so much better then. Virtually no pool haha. Loved that ship.

[Blue Skies]

We have just returned from Rhapsody OTS and having asked our waiter why we should rate the food top in the survey when most meat in the main dining room was dry and tough , (we will rate our waiters top as they were excellent ) He said if we did not rate the food top it reflected on him as he was told what to recommend by the chef and it was our waiters fault as he was not seen to be doing his job properly if we were unhappy with the food even if we didn't like what the chefs recommendations of the day were!

This cannot be right.

A rating for service reflects on the waiters.

A rating for food reflects on the chef/food department.

[grapau27]

We have just returned from Rhapsody OTS and having asked our waiter why we should rate the food top in the survey when most meat in the main dining room was dry and tough , (we will rate our waiters top as they were excellent ) He said if we did not rate the food top it reflected on him as he was told what to recommend by the chef and it was our waiters fault as he was not seen to be doing his job properly if we were unhappy with the food even if we didn't like what the chefs recommendations of the day were!

This cannot be right.

A rating for service reflects on the waiters.

A rating for food reflects on the chef/food department.

These surveys should differentiate between the food and the service because poor chefs are getting away with poor food as the waiter's are bullied into pleading with customers and most if they like the waiter will give top marks.

We are asked lots of questions so why not split the food survey from the waiters survey.

[kontraxed]

My cruises on Navigator and Liberty during this past January and January 2016, the only time one server mentioned the survey was just to remind us to complete it. There was no request for any particular score. We stayed in a JS but I don't know if that made any difference. Sometimes these posts make it sound like it's nothing but continuous pleading for scores and that just hasn't been my experience.