I was recently in South Africa and stayed at a Raddison Blu hotel, now what was interesting was this was counter to the advice I had from my South African business colleagues who had a really negative service experience at the same hotel a few weeks earlier.  Much of the concern was around waiting to be served, failure to acknowledge and similar behaviours -what I would call ‘eyes off’ service.  We have all been there, when even though there appear to be plenty of staff no-one actually provide the service you expect, there is nothing worse in service terms than feeling ignored. from a customer viewpoint.  There are numerous reasons that this can happen particularly in hotels, “it’s not my job”, “I have this task that I have been told to do by my Manager”, and so on largely driven by a hierarchical approach to work – how many times have you seen a Manager go behind the bar when customers are queueing to be served or jump on an empty Reception point…all too rarely and these failures in leadership contribute to the behaviours of the general staff.  In addition when it comes to training the focus is on Health and Safety or statutory training rather than the finer points of service experience.

Back to my hotel where I did indeed observe a lot of the above behaviours and could see why my colleagues were disappointed.  So I had a chat with the Duty Manager (interestingly and very positively he was a back-office Finance Manager who had asked to go front-line for the weekend) and asked if I could have a chat with a couple of the staff members to see if we couldn’t improve the experience at no cost to the staff member of the hotel.  No surprise, a ‘something for nothing’ and improvement in experience was snapped up by the Duty Manager with a finance background.

The conversations were about both how and why particular service elements could be improved, the context is key if you understand why you are doing something you are more likely to comply, equally if you are giving a better experience whilst not having to do too much differently you feel better about yourself too.  Over the course of the weekend we built the conversation and added nuances to the bar service one at a time.  So for example acknowledging a customer when they arrive even just with a nod of the head, adding a clean ashtray to the drinks table service tray so any dirty ashtrays are constantly replaced, remembering what a customer has ordered, welcoming back a customer who was in the bar on Saturday who returns on Sunday….and so on.  From a commercial perspective the challenge is to get more customers either paying guests or passing trade to use the bar, so any easy one to measure just look at the room spend for paying guests.

The acid test was when my colleagues who I had persuaded to return to the hotel thought of the improved experience.  They arrived Sunday evening and I waited in my room deliberately to see if they had a different experience (they didn’t know I had been working with the team).  When I went down and asked how it was they were delighted with this new improved experience if not slightly amazed it had happened and appreciative of the more personal and thoughtful approach being taken.  the changes cost nothing, they persuaded my colleagues to keep using the Hotel so a commercial win there, and the staff enjoyed the experience too.

Improving experience can sometimes be just about taking a step back looking at how it is being delivered today and tweaking it, but importantly taking the education of your team as a pre-requisite for success.