Macau Matters | Buying by app

Richard Whitfield

I am currently teaching a course in research methods but the traditional content, which emphasizes philosophical approaches to research and statistical analysis of research data, is very dry, boring and not very relevant for the future working careers of undergraduates studying hotel management. So, with the approval of the course coordinator I have refocused the course on how research can be practically used to evaluate customer service and improve business operating efficiencies in hotels and other service organizations.
Moreover, I believe that hands on experience is a very good way to learn so I am getting the students to do actual research projects. The first of these was to interview people and review available information to develop service blueprints for a range of different businesses around Macau. Service blueprints are a well known graphical method for summarizing the business processes and interactions between customers and service providers so they can be analyzed and improved.
The students did very good work and most organizations they approached were happy to talk to them and provide lots of information about how their businesses worked. They recognized the social responsibility aspects of cooperating with the students and they were proud to explain how their businesses worked. It also gave them a way meet prospective future employees and to get fresh ideas on how to improve their customer service.
Interestingly, shop managers in a large fast food chain in Macau resisted cooperating by telling the students they they needed to contact the head office. This is a very unfortunate attitude that is too often seen in middle management in bureaucratic organizations – no initiative and no pride in their work.
Even more interestingly, the student team looking at this business proposed an excellent idea for fast food chains to improve their customer service – developing a smartphone App that customers can use to order and pay for food in their outlets. They noticed the long queues and excessive cash handling and that most customers were young and had smartphones. They then realized that a smartphone App could use GPS location to identify the outlet the customer is in and allow food to be ordered for immediate delivery within the outlet. The App could display the order and collection number so that the food could be received at the normal collection counter. Moreover, the App could be linked to AliPay or any other online payment system to directly pay for the food. Thus, customers arriving at a fast food outlet could simply order and pay online and collect their food from the collection counter in the normal way – no queuing and no cash!
This change could minimize the problematic ordering queues and cash handling within fast food outlets to significantly improve the customer experience. Given the scale of their operations, large fast food chains could even develop their own payment gateway to have another revenue stream.
It may be that getting such an App implemented and adopted by fast food chains in Macau would be a very difficult project, but it certainly will not happen unless people start asking for it.
This kind of fact based analysis coupled with initiative and creativity is what we need to be developing in our young people and fresh university graduates. I also believe that we need them to be out in the community looking at real problems and issues and not in ivory towers considering abstract theories. And we certainly do not want them to take their lead from timid middle managers who have no pride in their work, take no initiative and whose only concern is keeping their head down and avoiding possible criticism. Better customer service in Macau needs better existing management, as well as creative young people.