No smiles in Hong Kong service
Ireland best at smiling and South America dominates in greeting and sales 

HONG KONG 25 April 2015:   Better Business World Wide is in the 11th year of compiling data from Mystery Shopping Providers in Africa, Asia, Europe, North- and South America, to create the Smiling Report. The report includes customer service data from evaluations conducted across a spectrum of industries gathered by mystery shoppers’ in professional mystery shopping companies that are members of Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA).

Learning Curve Solutions, a leading Hong Kong based Mystery Shopping company provided Better Business with its local retail and hospitality statistics collected throughout 2014. The global summary for the year 2014 is based on answers to more than 1.7 million questions covering Smile, Greeting and Add-on sales in 69 countries.

Hong Kong ranks poorly.
Keira Mackenzie-Smith, director of Learning Curve Solutions reported, “In each of the three categories, Hong Kong ranked rather disappointingly. From 41 countries, Hong Kong rated 39 in the Smiling stakes, ranked 58 out of 59 countries in Greeting, but rated slightly better in Add-on Sales placing 25 from 51 countries surveyed.”

Hong Kong service industries (retail, hospitality and finance) scored very low in each of the Smiling and Greeting categories while only managing to score above the world average in Retail Add-on Sales.

Sales more important than Smiles.
Hong Kong service staff find it more difficult to Smile at their customers, than Greet them. Only 48% of staff were seen smiling for customers compared to 58% offering of Greetings. At 50% for Add-on Sales, Hong Kong ranked closer to the world average of 52%.

Globally, 80% of the customers received a smile, 87% were greeted while only 52% received an add-on sales suggestion. The aggregated figures for smiling and add on sales are lower than in previous years, with the scores for greeting being around the same. However there are big differences between continents, countries and industries.

Smiling – Ireland is this year’s best smiling country with 97% followed by Greece and Puerto Rico on 93%. Five countries in Asia are at the bottom of the list of smiling countries, Slovenia 46%, South Korea 47%, Hong Kong 48%, Macau 55% and Croatia 56%. Highest scoring continents were North America with 84% and lowest scoring continent was Africa with 69%. China had a massive improvement from 58% in 2013 to 86% in 2014.

Greeting – Eleven South American countries are on top of the list for greeting, and six of them scored 100% on greeting, Costa Rica, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Martinique, Paraguay, and Venezuela. The following five scored 99%! The greeting received the lowest scores in Asia with Macau 53% and Hong Kong on 58%. South America was the continent with the highest score on greeting, 94% and Asia being the lowest with 72%. The Health & Beauty industry had the highest score on greeting with 95% followed closely by Hospitality with 94%. Lowest greeting score was found in the Transport industry with 54%

Add-on Sales – has since the Smiling Report started in 2004, always had the lowest scores compared with smiling and greeting. Also add-on sales is dominated by South American countries on the top of the list, Honduras 97% and Guatemala 91%, followed by eight other South American countries with scores between 61% and 82%. The lowest score was found in Japan 22%, Cyprus 26% and Croatia 27%. More than 50% of all countries scored less than 50% on add-on sales.

The highest scoring continent was South America with 62% and the lowest scoring continent was Africa with 35% and North America with 36%. The Hospitality industry had the highest score with 63%, while Leisure was the lowest scoring industry with 42% and Retail 48%.

Keira Mackenzie-Smith