Some New and Some Old (but still valid) Ideas on Customer Service (Part 1 of 2)
May 2015
Hospitality, and the hospitality industry, have been around a long time. The Western tradition goes back to the time of Abraham and his receiving of the three angles (messengers). Abraham’s receiving of the three messengers stands in sharp contrast to the lack of hospitality shown to the same messengers by the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. There are those who believe that Sodom and Gomorrah’s true sins were not sexual but rather that the cities’ citizens lacked a sense of hospitality.
The term hospitality is also related to the term for hospital. In fact, we derive the terms hospital, hotel, and hospitality all from the same Latin word, “hospes”, meaning stranger or foreigner. In call cases it was the job of the hotel and hospital to take care of the other, to show the stranger kindness and consideration.
It is that same principal that acts as the organizing principal around the concept of customer service. Customer service is all about doing more than the expect, the little something extra that turns frowns into smiles and creates a sense of not merely doing a job but of being proud of one’s job. Unfortunately in too many parts of the tourism industry we have forgotten that our job is hospitality. No matter what type of day we have had, good service dictates that we leave our personal problems at the door, put a smile on out face and go out of our way to put the customer’s needs first. To help you accomplish these goals, Tourism Tidbits presents you with some of the following ideas.
Some core values:
- Customer service begins with people who care about people. Customer service begins with caring. Hire people who care. If employees hate to smile and seek efficiency over friendliness, that person will probably not provide good customer service. Customer service starts where the customer service manual leaves off. It is about doing the right thing and not the most efficient thing, It is about showing people that you care, even when giving good customer service is a hassle. When hiring people in a customer service position, look for people who like to take charge and prefer to work with others than by themselves.
- Customer service is hard, if you do not make it a core value, then it will slip away. Core values mean that it is the service that counts more than the regulation. When customer service is a core value, employees go the extra mile, knowing that the reward for their action is not extra pay, but a sense of transforming someone’s day from a bad day into an unforgettably wonderful day. Good customer service then is an intrinsic value within your business. You cannot teach it but rather have to live it. That means that customer service starts with bosses and managers showing that they care about their employees.
- Empower Employees. There are some hotel chains where no matter what one requests the answer seems to be “no” or I do not know. There are other hotel chains where employees are encouraged to make on the spot decisions and have been provided with personal employee budgets that turn frowns into smiles. This basic principle that customer service starts with front line employees functions not only in hotels, but even in places where one would least expect it. For example, a number of police departments provide their on-line officers with credit cards to use to help a lost child, or lessen the impact of a tragedy. Empowering employees to make customers happy may cost a bit more money, but the company will more than make up for the lost in free word-of-mouth advertising and positive return visits.
- Teach employees that their job is to create beautiful memories. Tourism is all about the creation of memories. Every employee in the world of travel and tourism can either create a positive or negative experience. Unfortunately too many of our employees fear that if they provide extra service, if they go the extra mile, then their supervisors will chastise them for having overstepped their bounds. This sense of employee fear is then transferred to the customer with: “I am sorry but I cannot do that’.
- Solicit your own feedback. Most travelers and visitors rarely give accurate feedback, but most tourism managers know reality. Take the time to sit back and think what annoyed me the most when I get poor service? List the last ten times that you received poor service and then list the last ten times that you received outstanding customer service. Your reflections and introspections may be as valuable as the questionnaires that we ask our customers to fill out. Ask yourself questions such as: what actions or lack of actions made me angry? What words or body language impacted the way I feel? What do I remember about an incident that took place a year ago?
- Do not solicit feedback that you do not intend to use. It has now become commonplace for every hotel and airline to ask for feedback after every visit. Customers are coming to realize that (1) no one seems to care what one write on these computerized feed-back requests, (2) they take a great deal of time, and (3) they are merely for the benefit of the business. Often the computerized models insist on information that the customer does not want to give and in too many cases these “feedback” requests only serve to reinforce an already negative experience.
- If you are going to ask for feedback, have a plan to individualize the data and if the customer’s feedback is both negative and valuable, have a plan to turn the negative into something positive. The bottom line is that simply asking for feedback is not customer service but rather it is service that the customer gives to the business. What is true of computers is even more true of random, unsolicited telephone calls. There is nothing that will make an already angry customer even angrier than to call him or her at the dinner hour to gain information that only serves to help the company. If you are going to use cold calling, then make sure that your call center personnel have the power to fix a problem or provide compensation.
- Go on the offensive and send a thank you note rather than responding to a complaint. Many customers today are so used to being taken for granted that a thank you note, just for using the product or service changes the entire way that people think about your hospitality business. Customer service comes from doing the “little things” right and by so doing people come to feel a sense that they are part of your business.
- Get the CEO Involved in Customer Support Many people believe that CEOs either do not care or are too busy to care. The CEO does not have to answer every letter, but having the CEO spend a bit of time to call customers, to answer a few valid complaints or even to invite people to meet him/her at the corporate headquarters can change the entire image of a business or even a convention and visitors bureau. What is true of large cities and corporations is also true for smaller towns and business that want to build a loyal customer base.
