款待外宾初长成——订机票 Booking Airline Tickets for Customers

节后回来，我接待了几位来自印度的老客户，客户饿着肚子到达的我们公司的时候已经快8点了，还好我们公司有很多存货，我早已准备好，挑了其中的两种食物给客户，客户很高兴就开吃了，事后跟我一齐接待的新同事问我，为什么这么多食品，我只挑那两种招呼客户，而且并不是最吸引的？其实这里是有个小技巧的，因为这几位老客户是伊斯兰教徒，他们对食品是很有“要求”的，一般他们吃的食物都是带有清真LOGO的食品，所以就算你拿再多再丰富而他们不能吃的食物也是没有用的，而我挑的两种都是他们能吃的食物，你只要细心点注意看，会发现现在连雪糕都有清真标志的。什么叫清真LOGO，附附图：

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再聪明的人也总是会遇到意想不到的事情（不是自夸，只是为了引出下文），接待完客户已经快晚上10点了，客户第二天一早还要去宁波，让我帮他们订去宁波的机票。其实订机票我还算是驾轻就熟的，以前没有同事帮忙的时候都是自己帮客户订的，但这次居然搞了差不多2小时才把机票给订好：

我上网把所有资料填妥后，按提交，结果失败，原因居然是系统最多只能填写16个字符，你要知道一般外国客户的名字都是超级超级长的啊，本来填资料的时候就已经耗了很长时间，一次又一次核对名字，最终提交居然出了这个状况，我的心好苦啊。不可能填写缩写吧？怕与护照上的名称不符登不了机，马上打电话给客服，刚好碰到的客服可能也是新人，居然也没试过这个问题，让我一次又一次的报客户的名字给她，也是怕出错，一个名字要核对N次，最初她还在网页上帮我填写，试完告诉我真的不行（我真想说，这个我已经试验过了。）最后客服也没办法了，说尝试帮我们提交给主管看怎么处理，但还不能确定能否通过，让我等回复。狂晕～～

终于快接近12点的时候，接到客户成功订票的通知，我的心头大石顿时放下，欢送客人。

这次看似普普通通的接待，让我又学到了平时不尝试就没机会学到的东西，感觉自己又进步了一点点，哈哈～～让加班的疲倦一下子远离了我，心情愉悦。

After the holiday I've received some Indian customers, who came to our company at almost 8pm. They were hungry, and luckily we have got many snacks saved in our company. I prepared some snacks and picked out two snacks for them to eat, and they took them satisfactorily. After that my colleagues who received the customers with me asked why I chose those two snacks for them, which were not the most attracting ones. Actually there was some tact here. The customers are Islamists, who are very "demanding" on food, and they usually eat food tagged with the logo of Muslim, so it would be useless even if you give them many food but they cannot eat. And I picked out two snacks that they can eat. If you pay attention, you will notice that now even some ice creams are marked with the logo of Muslim. What is the logo of Muslim? See this picture:

However smart a person is, he/she will inevitably meet something unexpected (I am not trying to boast but to draw your attention to the following passage). After I received the customers, it was 10pm, and they needed to head for Ningbo the next morning, so they asked me to book airline tickets for them. Actually I am quite experienced when it comes to book airline tickets, and I used to do it for customers without the help of my colleagues. But this time it took me almost two hours to finish the job.

I wrote down all the needed information online and submitted, but it was failed, and the reason was that the system only allowed the input of 16 characters. You should understand that foreigners' names are all very long. It had token me such a long time to write all the information and check the long names, now all my efforts were in vain. I was so devastated. Is it okay to write down shortened names? But if the names written are not in accord with the names in their passports, the customers may not be able to board the plane. I called the customer service of the airport immediately and the customer service happened to be a newbie who had not met with problems like this before. She asked me to tell her the customers' names again and again in case of mistakes. She checked millions of times for a name. She helped me write down the information online but she finally told me that she failed (I wanted to remind her I've tried that myself). She was at the end of her wits and said she would forward the problem to the manager for solution and she was not sure that if it could be solved so I needed to wait for her reply. My Gosh…

It was almost at the midnight when I was informed that my booking for customers' ticket was done with success. I was so relieved and I saw the customers off in a good mood the next morning.

I've learnt something that I get no chance to know about from this normal reception and I feel that I've made progress. I was so happy that the fatigue of overwork was gone.

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