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Service

Customer service

Service recovery is what staff do after something has already gone wrong, so the guest's trust is repaired and not only the booking. A fix with no apology can still be a failure.

CAPS

Grade 11 · Tourism · Service

Tourism is one paper that mixes planning, money, people and place.

  • The paper

    One NSC paper of 200 marks. It covers tourism sectors, map work and tour planning, foreign exchange, attractions, heritage and culture, marketing, communication and customer care, and sustainable and responsible tourism.

  • Calculations and service

    Foreign exchange must show the currency, the rate, and whether you multiply or divide. A tour plan must fit the time and the map. Customer-care answers name what the tourist needed and what the staff member should have done.

  • How a marker reads it

    A common mix-up is to think the problem is solved once a room appears, even if nobody apologised and the guest was blamed on the system.

The paper is 3 hours. A slogan with no link to the attraction, or a rand amount with no rate, does not score the application marks.

Worked theory

Worked theory. On 8 March a guest's booking at a Durban hotel is lost at the desk. A sincere apology, a room tonight, and a call to the manager is recovery, and the guest stays. A shrug and a blame of the system is the failure, even if a room appears an hour later with no apology. The bed was only half of what was owed. The other half was being treated as a person whose booking mattered.

More worked examples

  • The wrong view in Franschhoek

    A guest in Franschhoek paid for a mountain-view room and was given a room over the car park. Recovery is a move that same evening and a sincere apology from the owner. A voucher emailed the next week, with no sorry, leaves the guest angry in the wrong room tonight. The voucher may be generous and still late. The guest's night was the thing that had to be repaired.

  • The wrong plate in Maboneng

    A guest at a restaurant in Maboneng ordered chicken and received a beef plate. Staff replace it without an argument and take the beef off the bill. That is recovery. Bringing a mint with the coffee, and never naming the wrong plate, is not. The mint did not answer the meal the guest did not order.

In ordinary words

Recovery starts by owning the mistake in plain words. It then does something that helps tonight, not only next month, such as a room, a meal or a corrected bill. A manager is involved when the front desk cannot put the promise right. Blaming a system, or fixing the problem an hour later with a shrug, leaves the guest with the insult as well as the delay.

In South Africa

A Durban hotel desk on a busy night is where a lost booking becomes either recovery or a shrug.

Part 1 / 4

What it is

Service recovery is what staff do after something has already gone wrong, so the guest's trust is repaired and not only the booking. A fix with no apology can still be a failure.

More worked examples

Board walkthroughs on this topic. Open one, copy the working, then try the next.

Example 1 / 20

A hotel survey: 180 of 240 guests rate service 'excellent'. Calculate the percentage.

How we got there

Read this like a teacher at the board. We go slowly, name every number, and say why we take each step.

Explain in another language · 11

1. What is the question asking?

Read the question twice. Circle the unknown. Underline every number and unit. The paper is asking: A hotel survey: 180 of 240 guests rate service 'excellent'. Calculate the percentage.

Before any working — hunt first

Given

Numbers and units already in the sentence: 180 of · 240 guests. Copy each one into a column. A name without a number is not given.

Missing

After you copy the given, the letter that still has no number is missing. The paper is pointing at: the percentage. Circle that word — that is the missing variable.

Find

We are required to find: the percentage. Write that as a symbol on the left, with a question mark, before you touch a formula.

Calculate

What we need to calculate: Percentage. Then substitute the given, one line at a time, to get the percentage.

In other words — as if you have never seen this before

If you have never seen this before: Percentage. We will name a method in words, write the formula with no numbers, then substitute one line at a time.

2. What do we already know?

180 of 240.

3. Which method — and why this one?

Percentage.

4. Step-by-step working

  1. 01 / 08

    Step A — Read the question twice

    Slow down. Circle the word that names the unknown. Underline every number and its unit. Do not grab a formula yet — first decide what the paper is actually asking.

    Why this step: If you can say the method in a sentence, you will pick the right formula. First-timers skip this and grab the first equation they remember.

  2. 02 / 08

    Step A2 — Hunt: Given, Missing, Find, Calculate

    Given: Numbers and units already in the sentence: 180 of · 240 guests. Copy each one into a column. A name without a number is not given. Missing: After you copy the given, the letter that still has no number is missing. The paper is pointing at: the percentage. Circle that word — that is the missing variable. Find: We are required to find: the percentage. Write that as a symbol on the left, with a question mark, before you touch a formula. Calculate: What we need to calculate: Percentage. Then substitute the given, one line at a time, to get the percentage.

    Why this step: Do not name the letters yet. First hunt: what already has a number (Given), what has no number (Missing), the word the paper wants (Find), and which formula still contains the missing letter (Calculate).

  3. 03 / 08

    Step B — Write the given in a column

    180 of 240.

    Why this step: A column with units stops you mixing cm with m, or minutes with seconds. Markers can also see you started correctly.

  4. 04 / 08

    Step C — Name the method in words

    Percentage.

    Why this step: If you can say the method in a sentence, you will pick the right formula. First-timers skip this and grab the first equation they remember.

  5. 05 / 08

    Divide

    180240×100=75%.

    Why this step: We only do one job per line so a marker can follow the marks — and so you can find a slip without starting over.

  6. 06 / 08

    Step G — Sense-check the size

    Ask: is this the kind of number a Grade 10–12 paper would want? A speed of 3 000 ms for a learner walking, or a probability bigger than 1, means a unit or algebra slip. Estimate first: round the numbers and do the sum in your head.

    Why this step: Markers write ‘unrealistic’ in the margin when the method is right but the size is wild. A 10-second head check often finds a missing 10² or a unit that never changed.

  7. 07 / 08

    Step F — Box the answer with its unit

    75%.

    Why this step: A number without a unit is half a mark on a Physics paper, and a marker can miss a Maths answer that is buried in working.

  8. 08 / 08

    Step H — What the marker is looking for

    On an NSC memo you usually earn: (1) a method mark for naming the right formula or idea in words, (2) an accuracy mark for substituting the given numbers with units, (3) an accuracy mark for the boxed answer with its unit. Write those three lines even if you are unsure of the arithmetic — blank pages score zero.

    Why this step: First-timers chase the final number and leave the method blank. The memo still pays out for the idea and the substitution even when the last line is wrong.

5. The answer

75%.

Copy onto your answer sheet — in this order

Answer: 75%.

6. Check it like a marker

Use feedback to improve.

7. A trap first-timers fall into

First-timers often grab the first formula they remember, mix units (cm with m, minutes with seconds), or drop a minus sign. Write the formula in words first: “this equals that, because…”

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