My initial role as an escape room host provided me with my first experiences of professional customer service and interaction. The customer-facing nature of the job provided fantastic opportunities to develop skills which have since helped me obtain other roles such as tour guiding. I would have to tailor my communications with customers to accommodate for various ages, experiences and attitudes. Customers would often have different expectations of what the experience would entail, or would have varying levels of understanding or enthusiasm. Therefore different approaches were required depending on the customer. Being one of the more experienced team members, the responsibilities of dealing with difficult or unhappy customers or fixing any issues within the rooms would typically fall to me. These responsibilities provided opportunities to work with customers to resolve any grievances or answer any questions they may have had, with the goal of turning any problems into an ultimately positive experience. More practically, if anything within the rooms broke, I had to be able to think on my feet under time pressure to work out a way to bypass or fix puzzles within the game so as not to disturb or negatively impact the customer's experience. I worked with and coordinated team members while fixing rooms which demonstrated and grew my skills of leadership, teamwork and clear thinking under pressure. Most of the issues that occurred were fixed without the customer ever noticing. All of the skills I learned and improved within my role as a host led to a referral by my manager for my next role as a tour guide.My work as a tour guide have allowed me to further develop my critical soft skills such as public speaking and leadership. The nature of the role involves addressing large groups of up to 26 people as many as 7 times per day. This has acclimatised me to interacting with and imparting information to customers, ensuring that they are both informed and entertained at all times.I am also entrusted with the safety of all passengers on the tours, meaning that if anything goes wrong, it is my responsibility to lead customers to safety and to try and rectify any issues. Such situations require me to be able to think and act quickly and decisively with the skipper under pressurised circumstances to deploy safety equipment, and ensure the customers are kept safe and calm.