Ever stop to think about the “click?” That little sound you take for granted when you absentmindedly close your hotel room door? Well, it might just hold the key to transforming customer service from good to great and even exceptional.
Let me back up.
I invariably find in my work as a customer service consultant that the littlest details can tell the most about an organization and can teach other organizations the most as well.
A friend of mine was halfway down the (very long) hallway at a Four Seasons hotel when he realized he’d forgotten something he would need later in the day. Walking back toward his room, he was surprised to see someone from engineering had the door open and was adjusting it.
Being the curious lad he is, he asked what was going on. The engineer said: “The housekeeper servicing the room next door noticed that when your door closes, it closes more with an indeterminate gentle closing sound, which is a little bit less definitive than the ‘click’ we prefer, so she called down to engineering to have us come up and zero in on the closing mechanism.”
This interaction got me thinking about how these seemingly small considerations can have a big impact on guest satisfaction and the overall perception of a brand. This is what I call a customer service system.
A customer service system is any action or set of actions that a business executes consistently over time to emotionally engage the customer and make the experience of doing business with them warmer, faster, easier and/or better.
In the case of Four Seasons, it is a customer service system built through the cross-utilization of discipline and awareness to bring something remarkable to bear upon the mundane.
We can divide the amazingness of the situation into three parts:
- Most obviously, probably: A standard for how a guestroom door should sound when closed. Four Seasons actually has a standard for how they like the door to close. They don’t like it to close with a bang, and they don’t like it to close with a whimper: they want a definitive yet subtle ‘click.’
- Less obvious, and at least as extraordinary: A reporting standard. Someone from housekeeping, whose “job this isn’t” thinks it is her job and has all of her awareness attuned to those details.
- Likely even less obvious: A scheduling/ customer-non-interruption standard. The hotel doesn’t schedule repairs at the hotel’s convenience. In fact, they do it in the absolute least convenient way for them as an organization, but the only way that provides true service—on the schedule of the guest. They did not call my friend and say “When do you think you’ll be leaving your room so we can do some maintenance?” They didn’t wait until the room was turning over anyway. They found a way to take care of the issue during his stay, so he would have the benefit of the clicking door, and yet, in a way, that should not have affected him in any way at all—despite the fact that this required an elaborate choreography of the housekeeper noticing he was gone and slipping engineering into the mix at exactly the right moment.
This is a pretty remarkable set of standards. Maybe it strikes you as being a “we have all the money in the world and we can waste it how we like because we’re Four Seasons.” However, it all comes down to recognizing the value of consistent, intentional and emotionally resonant interactions with guests.
Let’s bring these elements down to your own business.
- Auditory awareness: The door closing sound standards. Other businesses think their job is simply to deliver their product or their service. It’s not. It’s the entire experience: what the customer hears, feels, tastes and even (for better or worse) smells. If you don’t look at/hear/feel/smell your business the way a customer does, you’re failing your customer—and, ultimately, your bottom line. (In the case of the door sound, it is a functional sound that creates an emotion of wellbeing. The click means something to your guest; it means security, the ability to know without even looking back that the door has securely closed.)
- Cross-functional, purpose-driven behavior by your employees (the reporting standard): If you focus your employees only on their functional function, you are not only doing a disservice to your customers, you’re doing it in a way that is mystifying to them and in a way that wastes the human potential of the employee you are paying good money to employ. A housekeeper can do so much more than vacuum; they can also be a force for safety, security and more. And this is true of every employee in your organization—whom you will keep much happier and retain much longer by involving in more tasks.
- The scheduling/discretion standard: What schedule are you following in your business? The schedule of the customer or the schedule that suits you and inconveniences the customer? I was at a restaurant once where every time they filled the water glasses, they asked if we wanted the water glass filled, interrupting us countless times in the evening. And don’t even get me started on the Artie Bucco Syndrome, which I named based on the haplessly gregarious chef on “The Sopranos”. He would come along and tell you about the fresh mozzarella’s port of origin at the very moment you were proposing marriage to your girlfriend. While he is an extreme example, the number of times waiters have interrupted me in mid-burger-bite to ask me how my burger is are nearly infinite.
What Four Seasons has built in the course of getting the click right on your door is something you can do too. What is the state of your guest service systems? Are they in need of a tune-up? Odds are they do and can provide more SOI (Smiles On Investment) than they currently do.
Column contributed by Micah Solomon, a customer service consultant, trainer, keynote speaker and eLearning training producer. He is president of Micah Solomon & Assoc.
Note: This piece pulls from the author’s book, “The Heart of Hospitality: Great Hotel and Restaurant Leaders Share Their Secrets,” available for purchase at Amazon.