Employees in the local service industry are among the most stony-faced workers in the world because of work-related stress and the lack of qualified manpower, say observers.
They say the government should have better labour policies and training for staff to improve the services offered here, while some say the problem only occurs in the area of mass-market services.
Swedish-based firm Better Business World Wide recently released a global ranking of smiles and greetings in the service industries, such as retail and transport, across the globe. The firm finds that Macau’s service industries only scored 54 out of 100 points last year, placing us second-lowest among 53 economies in the smile ranking, just slightly better than the 45 points scored by South Korea.
For the ranking of greetings, Macau was also the second-lowest, scoring 60 out of 100 points to beat the 59 points of India by a whisker.
The scores mean that customers only get smiles and greetings in about half of their shopping experiences here, compared with the global average of 83 percent for smiling and 86 percent for greetings.
The firm compiled the ranking through data from the Mystery Shopping Providers Association, which recorded over 1.6 million responses last year on customers’ experiences across the globe regarding whether they received smiles and greetings during shopping.
Pundits here are not surprised by the findings. Andy Wu Keng Kuong, president of the Travel Industry Council of Macau, said: “These findings are in line with other surveys undertaken by the local institutes that there is still room for improvement in the level of services offered here.”
Bosses dare not advise workers to improve because of the current labour shortage, claimed Mr Wu. “They’re afraid their workers may resign after being rebuked,” he said.

Government lead

Fong Koc Hon, president of the Service Sector Employees’ General Association of Macau, said they were “too stressed” to smile due to the workload.
He advised companies to talk more to the workers to relieve their stress, as well as “strengthening the training of the workers instead of only relying on them to follow some guidelines by themselves”.
But Frederick Yip Wing Fat, president of the Macau Association of Retailers and Tourism Services, questions the sampling of the survey, which the Sweden-based firm did not give details about.
“If all the samples are collected from shopping malls like New Yaohan and Venetian Macao, the score here will not be low as the service of high-end retail is quite good here,” he said. “The problem lies with the small-and medium-sized enterprises which have difficulty retaining staff, let alone providing training for them.”
Mr Wu thinks that the obligation of training not only resides with the companies but also the government. “Such service awareness cannot be promoted by one or two people but society as a whole,” he said, adding an “appropriate” labour policy is also required.
Asian economies generally scored poorly in the rankings for smiling and greeting, according to Better Business World Wide. Mainland China and Hong Kong placed third and fourth lowest in the ranking of smiling, better than Macau and South Korea, while Poland, Ireland and Spain ranked in the top three.
For the greeting ranking, four South American countries – Guatemala, Panama, Peru and Uruguay – took the crown with a perfect score.