I work with companies—inside and outside the hospitality industry—to improve their relationships with guests. This work, which I call customer service transformation consulting, often involves moving an organization from strength to greater strength.
Other times, it’s about fixing something that is broken within the customer service loop. I often find clues suggesting that the care taken with customers in a property’s early or golden days was superior to what’s going on now in a variety of predictable ways: the level of personalization in customer interactions, the number of customer follow-ups and the care invested in each one, the thought that went into hiring and other similar key markers.
Unfortunately, the focus and attentiveness that are necessary for true hospitality tend to slide over time. Employees lapse into inappropriate language that guests find off-putting; managers busy themselves with paperwork, hidden out of sight in their offices rather than in the open greeting guests or smoothing over customer conflicts. At the same time, what in the past might have been face-to-face interactions are now automated, further alienating customers.
Is such a lowering of standards inevitable? Decidedly not—if you stubbornly stick to your guns. The mantra that’s needed is this: If you would’ve done something for your first guest, you’ll find a way to keep doing it for your 10,000th, without rushing, without cutting corners and without doing anything that would make a customer feel less than fully valued by your property.
DON’T STOP BELIEVING
The secret is to never stop believing in the importance of the individual guest and the importance of every individual interaction, no matter how many customers your hotel serves. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking there’s an infinite supply of new customers out there for the taking if only your marketing and sales departments would do their jobs, seeking out and converting more leads.
Tell yourself instead that not only are guests a limited commodity, there’s no such thing as “guests” in the plural. Rather, there’s just one guest: the one who’s being served right now. Advocating and sustaining this attitude of treating each guest like the only one in the world is one of the most important leadership responsibilities in any organization, and it’s one of the key weapons in the battle to avoid losing guests through perceived (and, perhaps, actual) indifference.
Building excellence, one guest at a time, is the best way to grow a business, sustain a business and reach for the stars. It’s also the most cost-effective way to grow. For comparison: How much did you spend on marketing last year? Advertising? Sales? I bet your investments there were sizeable. Developing a true customer focus is far and away the most effective, affordable way to keep and generate revenue, particularly in this era, where guest choices are influenced more than anything by “word of thumb.”
SERVICE IN ACTION
There’s no set star level at which exceptional guest service begins. Here’s an example. A dog bounds up to the reception area at a Hyatt House hotel in suburban Virginia. The front desk agent leans over and tosses a rolled newspaper into the dog ’s waiting mouth. With this stage of his mission accomplished, the dog walks away with his tail wagging, and the agent goes back to work processing paperwork for the next guest.
Has Hyatt House resorted to employing bell staff of the four-legged variety? Actually, this dog is a guest of sorts. His owner had just sold her home after 40 years of living there and, like many guests at Hyatt House, was in a bit of limbo before moving into her first apartment space as an empty nester. In recognition of this, the Hyatt associate at the front desk was doing what he could to help this guest maintain some semblance of her routine from her previous life. So, each morning, her dog pads down the hall to the front desk, gets the newspaper just like he did when they lived at home, and carries it back to the guest room where his “hooman” awaits.
Hotel guests are by definition dislocated. They’re not eating at home, not sleeping at home—they’re away. Though this displacement is no doubt voluntary at a resort location or a trip to a restaurant, at an extended-stay property the dislocation can be the result of life’s ups and downs—a divorce, between homes, job flux or a job assignment. These are situations where circumstances can be weighing heavily on the guest’s perception of the goods and services a hotel is providing. And it’s a situation where true service—hospitality—can shine.
But it can’t shine when delivered in an assembly-line fashion. It needs to be focused on one guest at a time. What Hyatt House was doing for its guest was specific to her, and, therefore, meaningful.
This is the crux of the matter—the opportunity and the challenge. Treating a guest as your only guest, focusing on what your guest needs beyond a secure lock on the door, a comfortable bed, a decent meal or meal recommendation and so forth, is where you’ll find the opportunity to distinguish yourself in hospitality and build a competitive edge.
Micah Solomon is a hands-on customer service consultant and trainer at Micah Solomon & Associates. He can be reached at micah@micahsolomon.com.