Bangladeshi and customers' experience

I read with great interest on the proposal to bring in more Bangladeshi workers to Malaysia. Some says the numbers can be up to 1.5 million, a number that was later denied by the Government. The government says that the number depends on the requirement of the industries. Well, you never get a definite answer from politicians anyway. At the time i write this article, the government had stopped the "invasion" of foreign workers from Bangladesh until further studies. But the fact remains that the MoU between the Malaysian government and Bangladesh counterpart still remains intact. Hence, the invasion may come later not sooner.

Speaking about Bangladeshi, I remembered my experience in a food outlet last month. I sent my in laws to KLIA 2 for them to catch a morning flight back to Kuching. It was early in the morning around 7am. After we finished checking in the luggages, we went for breakfast. We entered into a nyonya cuisine food outlet for breakfast. 

We sit in the food outlet and promptly greeted by the waiter. I am expecting a ‘nyonya and baba’ experience but I was shocked to see a Bangladeshi waiter. In fact, all the waiters in the food outlet are all Bangladeshi. I have nothing against Bangladeshi who tried to earn an honest living but I expecting a nyonya and baba experience from start to end not Bangladesh experience. 

Yes, I am talking about customers’ experience.

If you are offering Bangladeshi cuisine, by all means put all Bangladeshi elements in your restaurant.

Business needs to look at their concept and decide what best way to reflect that concept in every minute detail of their business operations. Although cost is a factor but cannot be the sole factor. Take that Nyonya cuisine for example, taking Bangladeshi waiters may reduce their operating cost but at the same time caused irreparable damage to their branding.

Luckily my favorite waterhole; Starbucks coffee still maintain policy of hiring locals to work in their café. Only local employee can understand local customers. Hence, it is easier for the local employee to build relationship with the customers. 

I said now and I say it again: it is all about customers’experience.

P/s: with the vast number of Bangladeshi in Malaysia, perhaps it is not a bad idea to tax them for any ringgit that they send back to their country. It is a good source of income for the country so we can lower down the GST :p