In order to improve your customer service, you need to establish what level or type of service you want your customer’s to experience. This will depend on your brand personality and customer expectations.
Once you know this, the next step is to look at how you can train this approach into the team culture so your staff bring it to life. This is obviously the hard part, but the following pointers are a great starting point:
Recruiting the right team is important
Recruiting the right people is vital. Recruit for attitude, not experience. So long as your staff have the right attitude, knowledge and training can always be taught.
Your team should know what part they play
Once you’re happy with your team, get them involved in what the hotel is doing. Talk them through the hotel’s visions and goals and ensure they know what part they play to helping to achieve them.
Expectations
Set expectations for your staff. Recognise and reward them when they meet these expectations. It’s also important staff know what the consequences are if they don’t meet them, for example, more training.
Leadership is vital
You can have the best staff in the world but their potential won’t be realised if your leadership is lacking. It starts from the top and works down to all levels of the hotel.
Be prepared for lots of hard work. Improving your customer satisfaction takes hard work, time and commitment, but the rewards are worth it.
Measuring your customer service is important. It used to be the case that a hotel inspector and mystery shopper would come and stay at your hotel and feedback after their stay. It was all very structured and formal.
Now if you have 300 people coming through your front door every day then you have 300 potential critics through websites like Trip Advisor and Booking.com and these critics have a global audience. Feedback can come from anyone so you need to be on your game now more than ever.
Once you’ve got your feedback, you need to bring it all together in one place so it’s easy to review, we recommend a system call Trust You. Actively asking guests to feedback after their stay via an online form is useful and mystery shoppers still do have their place.
Ensure all of the feedback received is used in training programmes to continuously improve the service your customers receive.
Peter is an experienced operator in the UK&I branded hospitality market with over 20 years experience. Before joining Michels & Taylor, he was an Area Director for IHG, running 12 of their hotels in the South of England and then running their 8 key hotels in London including the world’s largest Holiday Inn in Cromwell Road. Prior to IHG, he spent a number of years at Hilton where he managed the 300 bedroom Hilton Brighton Metropole and 5 Hiltons across the M4 corridor. Peter brings his wealth of experience to the M&T managed hotel division where, as MD, he is responsible for ensuring the hotels optimise their profits for their owners and, with the M&T operational team, are run professionally and efficiently.
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