I got the opportunity to return again to give this page a chance. The manager said the employees have been retrained.
The service has indeed improved A LOT! There's more staff in the floor, and they actually check up on you. They take initiative to ask if you want to order your next round or just drop by to refill the soupbase. It's also easy to call for service now as well. Food came out really fast too.
One thing that irked me a little: I love mantou (deep fried bun), and these are only good when it's fresh. Since we arrived all the way til we're ready for dessert (a good 2 hrs), the batch of mantou was just sitting there and never changed. So when we tried one, it was cold and pretty hard already. I told the server about it, and if they can make a fresh batch since it's been sitting there. The server told me that since there's still mantous left in the existing batch then we'll have to wait til it finishes. I was like: are you serious? That batch is not good anymore and
you want people to eat that? The server said she'll check with the manager, and they did change it.
I think those food in the buffet items need to be reconsidered. Maybe make it order by request so it's guaranteed fresh or they need to have a freshness timer where they need to replace any existing batch after 1 hour. Otherwise, nobody's going to eat that.
Aside from the hiccup with the mantou, I really enjoyed my experience here now. The food itself was never really an issue for me here. So if they can make that level of service consistent, it would be a great hotpot place to keep visiting.