Service Bell

Proactivity

Proactive behaviour is more than just taking initiative. It involves a notion of response-ability. The ability to look for opportunities to formulate a response.

Reactive is putting out a fire - Pro-Active is fire prevention.

Reactive is bringing a glass of water to a guest who requests it- Pro-Active is placing an extra box of tissue on the bed table of a guest who appears to have a cold.

Reactive is taking care of flight reconfirmations at the Concierge counter - Pro-Active is the front desk clerk who asks the check-in guests if he would like to reconfirm his ticket now.

The great thing about proactivity is that most of the time, it costs nothing.

PLACE: Mandarin Oriental Hotel Hong Kong YEAR: 1991. I was staying there while I had a busy two days appointment schedule in the central district. During lunch, one of my blazer buttons snapped. I put the button in my pocket. Fortunately, as I was not far from the hotel, I went back to my room to change the suit and casually left my jacket on a chair. Guess what happened! Yes, you are right! When I came back at 6pm, the button had been sewn back in place. Now, you will tell me: "It's the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, they have more staff than we do, they can afford to do this." And I will tell you: "They became the Mandarin Hong Kong".

if you want to compete on customer care, can you afford not to do this? Excuses may work with other executives and the head office; they don't work with guests and customers. You deliver or you don't. Period.

Fix it when if it fails

Ron Zemke wrote in The Service Edge: "...the blind spot in many service delivery systems is that they fail even to anticipate that something can go wrong”.

Excellent service - the kind that customers really talk about - comes from turning these moments of customer disappointment into customer delight, turning disservice into service, and aggravation into astonishment. This is service recovery.

It is made up of all the actions you take to get a disappointed customer to a state of satisfaction with your organisation.

Customers are not always upset when a problem arises - they are human too and know that a mishap can happen - they often become irate because nothing- is done about it.

Service recovery is important because it has a huge economic impact. Using service recovery to heal upset customers is one of the best ways to keep them. Consider that it takes five times as much money to get a new customer as it does to keep the one you have now. It is clear: Service recovery does make money.

I know of some hotels where to offer a simple cup of coffee to a dissatisfied guest, waiters and captains need to go through several layers of bureaucracy and inquisition. No wonder they don't do it.

Employees need freedom to act. You need to develop with them appropriate ways to solve problems, and leave them initiative. Training your staff to solve guest problems and to turn upset customers into satisfied guests is one of the highest impact activities you can think of.

Train for the long term

As my ex-boss used to say, showing his forearm and pretending he was giving himself a jab: “it has to get in the blood! Once it circulates in there, it stays there!" So how do you get it in there in the first place?

Yes, by training and re-training. There is a lot of lip service about training. How do I know? Seriously, do you think you can enroll today in the Boston marathon and expect to finish it - I am not even talking about winning - without training for months and miles before hand. How can you expect to give your staff less than basic on the job training, and expect them to perform? With so much turnover people are here today, gone tomorrow you say.

There is considerable evidence that people stay longer where they receive training. Don't cut training when times are had: it is time to increase it, and boost productivity. Top service provider typically devote three to five percent of their total paid hours to training. Some up to 10%. The point is: you need to do what you need to do to ensure complete customer care.

Pay for knowledge and continuous improvement and development. The more staff train and educate themselves, the more you should pay. Rewarding only seniority and longevity leads to complete sclerosis.

Cross training is a key to guest satisfaction in the hospitality industry. Here is why.

#1 it improves the knowledge of employees to be able to solve customer problems on the spot,

#2 it helps employees understand the internal customer concept,

#3 it dramatically cuts on turnover due to boredom and lack of interest and

#4 it is the most affordable form of training you can get.

With continuous cross-training, employees not only learn new jobs but can also qualify for pay rises.

Provide the right climate

You need to set in place a climate that supports and encourages teamwork and leads to more satisfying, motivating and meaningful work for your employees. You don't change a climate by bringing in radiators and air-conditioners. You do it by making small positive changes daily and by being consistent.

That climate should be one of continuous improvement, not just of achievement and then, let go. Introduce Kaizen, the Japanese notion of smalI, constant increments. Make it a culture. Reward maids who find better ways to clean bedrooms or stock supplies, and line cooks who find ways to help cut costs, improve recipes, etc.

Do you have your people selected, trained, empowered and rewarded for providing service that delights your customers?

If people are given ownership of their ideas and the means to be involved and bring their ideas about, there is a greater likelihood that the needed changes will come about. I know what many of you in Southeast Asia are saying: "All this sounds great and it probably works in the West, but it won't work here". Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, Russia is not the West, but it is starting to work for them - same with China and Japan.

The key is that intrapreneurship (small bands of people who are responsible for reinventing services in organizations) motivates people.

People always have ideas. The only element that is lacking is the prospect to carry out those ideas. Either bosses seize the ideas for their own recognition, or ideas are rendered blunt or killed with: "It won't work, it's too expensive and so on." '

The challenge to today's manager is to develop a breeding ground for those ideas to blossom

FOCUS ON IMPROVING THE ABILITY OF YOUR COMPANY TO MEET CUSTOMER NEEDS:

Be a committed leader with a vision
Encourage a high degree of teamwork
Encourage people to go out of their way to solve guest problems
Accept new ideas, new ways of operating and willing to experiment
Be committed to do the best possible job
Develop a total dedication to complete customer care

There is no third chance

The key to re-defining the notion of customer care is the attitude and action displayed by management. As the general manager of a recently opened 5 star property in KL was telling me: "More amenities do not bring more guests. We must learn how to focus on what guests really want and satisfy them with true customer care ".

The same day, same hotel, a staff was telling me, commenting to the fact he was having difficulties obtaining coffee break refills from the kitchen: "In many places, people want to satisfy the guests, here the general idea is to satisfy the chef".

Same hotel again, a key executive was confiding: "We cannot give anything extra, you must understand that all has to be accounted for". And further lowering his voice, referring to the GM: "You know how my boss is!"

Obviously, the message had been understood differently. Management is always by example. Nothing serves to give great training sessions to staff, motivational videos than to have managers give the wrong example.

Complete Customer Care

Formulate an appropriate vision to be shared among all staff members

Instill a sense of ownership and passion for customer care in employees and executives

Define or re-define minimum standards expected for every activity undertaken by the hotel, taking customer responsiveness into consideration

Develop a method of self-checking, enabling staff and managers to improve on such standards and guarantee guests total dedication

Create a system that nurtures individual staff creativity and responsiveness to challenging situations

Develop managers and supervisors into coaches and mentors rather than controllers and wardens

Promote a scheme of productivity improvements reflecting total internal and external customer dedication