STEP into a shop or restaurant here and six times out of 10, there's service with a smile by staff who speak decent English.

A Straits Times check of 101 outlets in two popular shopping centres found that service standards and language skills passed muster, even though one in four staff members was a foreigner. All in, 78 Singaporeans and 23 foreigners were surveyed.

Foreign front-line staff have been the target of complaints recently. Readers have written to The Straits Times Forum pages to highlight their poor English, which has led to misunderstandings, delays and frayed tempers.

Such lapses, however, are an exception, The Straits Times team found during its encounters with waiters and shop assistants from China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam.

In fact, they fared as well as their local counterparts in the four areas tested - English standard, friendliness, speed and product knowledge.

According to the Manpower Ministry, there are 757,000 foreigners holding work permits here, although no figures are available for those working in front-line positions.

Singapore has scored respectably - nearly seven out of 10 - in the first national customer-satisfaction survey, an indicator of service standards here.

These results were mirrored in the latest check.

In six instances out of 10, staff members were polite, helpful and reasonably accommodating to questions and requests. Most also seemed to have had some basic training.

Only 12 of the 101 workers fared below par in terms of English standard. Workers from China had a noticeably poorer command of the language.

Although four of the six Chinese nationals encountered were able to speak basic English, they looked uncomfortable and hesitant in doing so, especially if they had to speak about the products in detail. Two of them spoke no English at all.

In one case, a sales assistant at a souvenir store had to get her Singaporean colleague to translate every question asked.

At one Chinese restaurant, the waitress insisted on speaking in Mandarin. The only responses she could muster when asked questions in English were shakes and nods of her head, accompanied by puzzled looks.

Switching to Mandarin, however, she was able to explain at length the specialities of the restaurant and the ingredients in dishes such as fried noodles and steamed buns.

Chinese nationals were not the only ones who had difficulty communicating in English. Five Singaporeans fared below par on this aspect as well.

To address this problem, some employers have started giving their staff in-house English lessons.

There are also training programmes through the Workforce Development Agency, while the Singapore Retailers Association will be offering a service English programme for foreign retail workers.

Poor English was not the only service lapse encountered.

Four in 10 service staff were not welcoming, and three in 10 did not know enough about the products they were trying to sell.

Filipinos, however, proved to be the stars of the show.

Not only were the 10 service staff encountered courteous and attentive, they were also well-acquainted with the products they were selling and had no trouble communicating, the team found.

One Filipino sales assistant in a clothing store, for example, hurried around to check for different clothing sizes immediately - even though he had both hands full, replacing clothes on the racks. He even apologised for the time he took to get a particular item.

And when demanding customers took a long time trying clothes on but left empty-handed, he said goodbye with a word of thanks and a warm smile.

Said teacher Elsie Teo, 36: 'It's this kind of exceptional service which encourages customers to return.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on May 26, 2008

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