Crew who solicit for good survey review or Navigator App compliments. How do others feel about that?

[Iamthesea]

On our last cruise, someone told me that if a crew member gets a positive mentioned on the app that they will be rewarded with 15 extra minutes of port time. 

[Copper10-8]

2 hours ago, Iamthesea said:

On our last cruise, someone told me that if a crew member gets a positive mentioned on the app that they will be rewarded with 15 extra minutes of port time. 

 

Come again? Crew, meaning all crew, get crew leave ashore, after a certain number of pax are off the ship, priority-wise. An eagerly awaited P/A  announcement, heard only in crew areas, will be made by the OOW indicating that "shore leave has been granted" and the "run on the gangway" will commence!  On drill days, i.e. fire drills, general emergency drills, MOB drills, etc., shore leave is only granted after that drill has been completed to the satisfaction of the captain and staff captain, the coast guard (as part of an inspection) and/or local authorities doing their thing on the ship. A lot of crew have an emergency function apart from being a waiter, room steward, bartender, 3rd officer, HR clerk, even entertainment staff, you name it.

 

There is always a minimum amount of crew that stays onboard to handle emergencies, i.e. none of the four fire team leaders can be off the ship at the same time. Same goes for the staff captain and the captain and/or the staff captain and the security officer, both doctors, all the nurses, etc., etc. If a crew member with a duplicate role as another crew member (i.e. a certain number of lifeboat commanders, communicators, emergency elevator operators, stretcher team, etc.) wants to get off the ship, while another person with that same role is already ashore, an alarm on the laptop computer, manned by security at the gangway will activate, a trap door above that gangway podium, will open, and a red spotlight putting that crewmember in a "cone of shame" will activate (j/k on that last one), resulting in security instructing that crew member that he/she cannot pass Go and collect $200 greenbacks, and to stay aboard until his "duplicate role" returns, freeing up a spot ashore for him/her.

 

There is also such a thing as crew "all aboard" time, as there is for guests. A lot of that depends on the time a particular crew member has to be back in uniform ready to start/restart his/her shift which, quite frequently, is prior to the ship's departure. The crew "All Aboard time" / "last tender to the ship" is usually one half hour to an hour before the guest one! Crew that show up tardy for that time will have their crew I.D. confiscated and told to report to the staff captain's office behind the bridge to convince him to give it back. If it keeps happenin', it will result in termination of contract. If a crew member is late for crew, as well as for guest, all aboard time, the captain will leave him/her behind with no problem, as I recall happening more than once; Quebec City, next stop Montreal, comes to mind and that will also result in a face-to-face interview with local immigration officers, i.e. CBP in the U.S. or CBSA in Canada, prior to reboarding, where the crew has to convince them that they were not illegally attempting to stay in their particular country by missing the ship. Lots of headaches for the tardy crew as you can surely see1 And I'm not calling anyone Shirley!

 

In a shell of a nut, there is no "you've earned an extra 15 min. ashore"  clause for crew under the above rules and regs!

[ExpatBride]

8 hours ago, BigMattT said:

 

…and some MBA statistician’s idea that anything less than a 9 or 10 on a survey is a “fail”, is unbelievably problematic.

 

 

 

That's not usually how it works. There should be a benchmarking period, and then KPIs aimed at incremental improvements. E.g., The baseline is an average rating of "6" in category A and the target for next quarter is to raise that to an average of 7. There might be incentives for getting an individual  rating of higher than a 6. 

Even with NPS, a rating of 9–10 is pretty rare and well-run companies know that.

[Iamthesea]

Copper10-1 - That's a lengthy response.  I have read similar explanations of how "leave" works.    I was simply stating what I was told on my cruise a couple of weeks ago. I am pretty sure that the person telling me heard it from a waiter.  Some crew, not all, get X amount of time onshore. A positive mention gets them more time. 

 

Many times, I asked crew members how their day was and if they were able to go ashore.  Most of the answers were "not today, but I should be able to get off tomorrow."  Or "the next time we come around to this port, I should be able to see it from land."

 

 

Edited June 7, 2023 by Iamthesea
Not sure what happened to my formatting!!!

[Sea42]

6 hours ago, Copper10-8 said:

In a shell of a nut, there is no "you've earned an extra 15 min. ashore"  clause for crew under the above rules and regs!

Mustafa Gulbahar. Hotel General Manager on Nieuw Statendam gave that information about crew members being allowed 15 extra minutes of time off for mentions on the Navigator app while doing a coffee chat program with the cruise director. This was on the May 14th of this year.

[Iamthesea]

Thank you for the confirmation, Sea42. 😀 I did not go to that coffee chat, but the person that told me about the extra time must have.  We were having dinner with a group on Club Orange when the conversation came up.

 

BTW- Love your new photo!  I spent most of the cruise looking for a pretty brunette with long hair like in your previous photo.  Sorry it took so long to locate you. 😁

Edited June 7, 2023 by Iamthesea

[Sea42]

23 minutes ago, Iamthesea said:

Thank you for the confirmation, Sea42. 😀 I did not go to that coffee chat, but the person that told me about the extra time must have.  We were having dinner with a group on Club Orange when the conversation came up.

 

BTW- Love your new photo!  I spent most of the cruise looking for a pretty brunette with long hair like in your previous photo.  Sorry it took so long to locate you. 😁

LOL I had my haircut about 2 weeks before the cruise! I'm glad we did get a chance to say hi.

The photo is from the Orange party night on our cruise. My flannel was the only thing I owned that was orange and it came in handy on some of our chillier days!

[BigMattT]

6 hours ago, ExpatBride said:

That's not usually how it works. There should be a benchmarking period, and then KPIs aimed at incremental improvements. E.g., The baseline is an average rating of "6" in category A and the target for next quarter is to raise that to an average of 7. There might be incentives for getting an individual  rating of higher than a 6. 

Even with NPS, a rating of 9–10 is pretty rare and well-run companies know that.

Unfortunately, “Top box scoring” methodologies and metrics are too often employed nefariously to incentive programs in hospitality. Usually under some guise of rewarding teams that “go above and beyond”.
 

I’ve seen number crunchers ruin so many reasonably profitable and extraordinarily artful guest experiences to squeeze the slightest bit of “improvement” out of an asset… and it’s extremely disheartening to see when it’s increasingly service workers being the assets squeezed.

[JeffElizabeth]

Irony? If you give a bad review, your favorite bartender will not get shore leave and will be available to mix your perfect Bloody Mary when you stay on board that morning. (Totally kidding!) 

 

I do hate the demands for a "10" every time. I only give a 10 for super duper service. 

Edited June 7, 2023 by JeffElizabeth

[YourWorldWithBill]

1 minute ago, JeffElizabeth said:

Irony? If you give a bad review, your favorite bartender will not get shore leave and will be available to mix your perfect Bloody Mary when you stay on board that morning. 

😉

[ontheweb]

15 minutes ago, JeffElizabeth said:

Irony? If you give a bad review, your favorite bartender will not get shore leave and will be available to mix your perfect Bloody Mary when you stay on board that morning. (Totally kidding!) 

 

I do hate the demands for a "10" every time. I only give a 10 for super duper service. 

I once had a cable guy tell me NOT to give him a 10, but a 9 instead. He said a 10 sometimes was scored as a 1, and that would get them into trouble. I think they later changed to 1-5 instead of 1-10.

[BetsyS.]

ontheweb- cable guy here said same thing. The 10 scored as a 1. It was changed to 1-5. 

[Florida_gal_50]

I  recall signs at the gangway that that said what time the guests had to be aboard and when the crew had to.  This was probably quite a few years ago.  I never look anymore when getting off the ship because I look before I leave my room.  I’m either n a hal excursion or just getting off the ship for an hour or two so I’m not generally cutting it close.

[sunviking90]

I don’t recall being asked for good reviews on HAL, but on Princess and Celebrity we have been. On our last Celebrity cruise our waiter was very good, but the speech in the last evening for 10s on the survey was cringeworthy. It was very uncomfortable.

On Princess we always have the same waiters and usually they just quickly ask kindly the last night to remember to fill out the survey and they hope we’ve been happy. Our one waiter added that it was especially important if we’d been happy with his assistant to mention his name as it was his first contract. I thought that was very kind of him to look out for his helper. I think also what they are trying to say in not so many words is that good reviews are almost more important to them than extra (over and above) tips

Edited June 7, 2023 by sunviking90

[YourWorldWithBill]

2 hours ago, sunviking90 said:

I think also what they are trying to say in not so many words is that good reviews are almost more important to them than extra (over and above) tips

Your thought is correct: In a discussion with a concierge who had been extremely helpful and gone out of his way for us, when we brought up the subject he said that the review was more important than any tip.

[CNSJ]

Most of us that exchange info/discuss on this board have the resources to enjoy cruising, albeit some more than others.  The crew on HAL ships work very hard and provide, in my opinion exceptional service with a smile.  The compensation they receive is far less than most if not all of you would accept for work in any job.  Throw in months away from family....!

 

That said, the "system" that drives their request you provide them a good review is not their fault, it belongs to HAL management - which pushes this down to the cabin stewards, bartenders and waiters.  I think that good reviews by name matter more than extra "in hand" cash gratuity.  

 

We tip well and provide great reviews to those who do their job well. On a long cruise, well before it ends.

 

It is rare that we have had any issues with HAL crew.  A bad review may be loss of their job.   We understand that. 

 

I also find that "thank you" with eye contact sincerity is an important interaction with the crew.

 

When I interact with the Captain, Hotel Manager or Food and Beverage Managers, I do let them know how their teams are performing.  Comment cards that call out crew members by name for great service also matter.

 

I think those that get in a huff about being asked for a review (by name) are being a bit petty.  Put yourself in their shoes.  I appreciate the crew and the hard job they have.  

 

Just my two cents (probably four cents due to inflation).

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by CNSJ

[ontheweb]

15 hours ago, BetsyS. said:

ontheweb- cable guy here said same thing. The 10 scored as a 1. It was changed to 1-5. 

Same cable company? Spectrum?

[BetsyS.]

ontheweb - Yes. Spectrum.

[Colorado Klutch]

It's inevitable that when a business puts so much emphasis on reviews, people will attempt to game the review system. Reviews are now a big industry and fake reviews are a big part of that industry.

On my recent HAL Alaska cruise, nobody asked me for a positive review. I also would been put off if someone had.

My son and daughter used to work at California Pizza Kitchen. Every day they had a staff meeting and got berated about negative reviews. The staff were puzzled because, typically, they didn't have any negative experiences with customers which would have warranted such negative reviews. The online review was extremely long and someone figured out that when people lost interest and simply closed the web page, it automatically gave a "1" for every category. Nice. 

After leaving Pizza Kitchen, my son was the beverage manager at a Seattle wine bar. He would regularly get calls from Yelp. The Yelp rep would say, "Hey, you got a lot of positive reviews here. If you sign up for our monthly service, we can post those for you. And for an extra fee, we can make those bad reviews go away." Nice. Many people have told me Yelp absolutely does not do this, but my son is not lying.

 

During my HAL cruise, my mom and I chatted with the Activities Director. She was great and we told her how much we were enjoying the cruise. She politely asked if we could please make sure to complete the HAL survey and share our experience. I thought that was fine. But asking for a positive review definitely falls in the category of "Not Cool". 

 

Edited June 8, 2023 by Colorado Klutch

[Lido deck main]

On my last cruise people complained about the accents of the entertainment staff.  Just nuts.  Just read the tone of some of the posts,  some people are not that positive in general.  The complainers are always vocal and the rest of us who go with the flow and understand current conditions, our cruise maybe not be as enjoyable as previous cruises but still see the value and appreciate the fact that we can travel.  I can understand why a crew member would ask for a positive review and I would not be offended at all. 

[donandmelissa]

I don't mind them asking.  The request almost always comes after I have thanked them personally for going above and beyond what I expected.  The staff works long, long hours.  My understanding is that positive comments in the app result in extra time off.  I am happy to provide that for someone who has gone the extra mile for me or my family.  

[YourWorldWithBill]

7 hours ago, donandmelissa said:

I don't mind them asking.  The request almost always comes after I have thanked them personally for going above and beyond what I expected.  T

Same here. "The request almost always comes after I have thanked them personally for going above and beyond what I expected."

[PACD_JG]

I was listening to my local NPR station last night and they were having a membership drive.  You know...please donate to support public radio.  PBS does it all the time too.  And let's be honest, public radio/television hosts actually grovel for donations.  Anyway, as a frequent consumer of NPR/PBS...I think I just changed my initial perception on HAL employees asking for great reviews.

[rodndonna]

I am one of those who becomes uncomfortable when staff starts mentioning reviews or surveys. 

 

We just came off the Zaandam and it seemed more toned down (thankfully), but not sure of that is ship specific. Surveys/reviews were mentioned a few times, but only to give us a quick reminder that they appreciate people taking the time to complete their survey.

 

On this cruise it was never stated, implied or felt like a personal request to to get their name in a review, which it had in our previous experiences.

[HappyInVan]

As always, I would give a fair and honest assessment.