Smiling service – is it the norm everywhere?

Cultural differences are much discussed in various contexts. They are easy to notice both in one's own country and – especially – when traveling abroad. One such difference also happens to be the way of serving and approaching customers. These are precisely the subject of The Smiling Report – a project that has been collecting and analyzing data on service friendliness around the world for 13 years. This includes smiling, greeting customers, and upselling during service.
What does 2016 look like in this respect?

Let's start with the differentiation of service between continents in terms of giving the customer a smile.

It turns out that staff smile most often in North America. Customers there are greeted with a smile in as many as 90% instances. The situation is equally high in South America, where employees smile in 84% instances. Our continent fares slightly worse – taking all countries surveyed into account, we received a score of 79%. The Asia-Pacific region came in last, receiving only 65%.
These are the basic and most global data on smiling during service. You'll learn more soon – about how customer service friendliness looks in different countries and industries.

Research methodology:
Globally, 685,072 questions related to smiling were asked. Results from 41 countries were used in the analysis. The data is provided by companies that conduct Mystery Shopper research in their countries – Quality Watch is one of them. As part of these studies, auditors – individuals posing as real customers – visit stores and institutions to check the quality of service. The Smiling Report analyzes such visits, taking into account only questions about smiling, greetings, and upselling.