Jenny Lao-Phillips
Everywhere we go these days we seem to hear two words: 快啲…快啲…快啲 “Fai Di… Fai Di… Fai Di” (meaning faster, faster, faster). From lining up at the supermarket cashier, to entering buses, to eating in a restaurant, everyone seems to be in an extreme hurry. We all know that patience is a virtue, but like any other kinds of virtues, it is easier said than put into practice. This trend of inability to wait has been spread even into this once serene little town of Macao.
It is normal for human beings to seek instant gratification, but the definition of ‘instant’ is getting shorter.
Express delivery for online orders takes around 3 days for products to be delivered to Macao from the other side of the world, but 3 days is becoming too long. There are those who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the delivery of a book that cost about the same just because they cannot wait to read it.
With the increasing speed of Internet connection, and the shorter time for downloading materials, a website that responds in 3 seconds is considered too slow. We have almost forgotten the time when it took 5 minutes to connect to the Internet, not to mention the time when there were no emails, and it took weeks to send a letter to a friend abroad. And soon, we may forget that food takes time to cook. Perhaps that is why more Japanese restaurants have opened in my neighbourhood: salmon sashimi is way faster to make than baked salmon, profit margin may even be higher, and most importantly, it meets customer demands – fast.
Being fast, quick and efficient is the third biggest challenge faced by SME owners, after the usual rent and staffing issues. Customers are demanding not only faster service but quicker results as well. According to some beauty center owners, they survived only because of a group of old customers. They failed to attract new customers from the younger generation because they could not provide customers with tighter, smoother and three shades fairer skin tone in an hour.
The same problem is faced by owners of small F&B outlets who claimed that customers are demanding not only their coffee be delivered as soon as they place their order, they don’t even seem to give the chef time to cook their food. Customers are demanding so much in efficiency that quality has become a victim in this age of impatience. Chefs cannot prepare their food to their best because of the shorter time customers are giving them to cook. Waiters and waitresses are not given enough time to recommend special items or offer friendlier and more courteous service to their customers. Even businesses with minimum customer interaction, such as the small old-style convenience stores, are complaining that customers demand cashier service in seconds. An old lady who has been running a small local shop for years claimed that running the shop is getting stressful because young people wouldn’t let her take time to calculate the price for their purchase, and kept rushing her. “Fai Di! Fai Di! That’s what I hear every day now” said the shop owner grumpily.
As entrepreneurs are busy spending all their efforts in enhancing efficiency, service processes become more robotic. It is not surprising that there is not much space for differentiation. While local entrepreneurs stressed the importance for innovation and service differentiation for their businesses to survive, they simply have no time to innovate or differentiate. Even if they do, customers have no time to try new things, for quality service is now a luxury we cannot afford (time) to enjoy. Jenny Lao-Phillips
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