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Great customer service is the foundation of any hospitality business. It makes the difference between a so-so experience and one that the guest is dying to repeat!
Here are five of the top customer service skills that you need to wow your visitors (and your managers).
Empathy
When you practice empathy, you put yourself in another person’s shoes. While you may be tempted to dismiss an unhappy customer, telling yourself that they’re being unreasonable or unfair, the empathetic approach asks: How do they feel at this moment?
Sure, from your side of the check-in desk, a 45-minute delay until their guest room is ready seems like no big deal. But consider their point of view. They just arrived in town. They’ve been traveling for hours, and they’re desperate for a shower and a nap. But just when they think they’ve reached the end of their journey, they’re told that their room isn’t ready. Of course they’re going to be grouchy. And you would be too.
When you put yourself in the customer’s shoes, you can better anticipate their needs and make things right when they don’t run smoothly.
Observation
There’s more to hospitality than simply meeting guest requests. What about the requests they’re not making out loud?
Great customer service often requires taking non-verbal cues from your guests. Is the couple at table 14 gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes? You’ll want to be present to meet their needs but not obtrusive. This is clearly a romantic occasion, and they’re probably not looking for fun banter from their server. But the large group over at table 26, laughing over their beers? They might enjoy (and even expect) a little more levity from their server.
Maybe you notice a woman checking into your hotel with three small children in tow. She probably wants to get her brood safely tucked away in her room as quickly as she can. But the trio of friends checking in for a weekend getaway may be more interested in hearing about local nightlife and the best restaurants nearby.
Great customer service isn’t treating everyone the same. It’s treating everyone as an individual with different wants and needs. Practice your observation skills so you can meet these needs without being asked.
Communication
Communication is one of the most important skills in customer service. And while your interactions with guests are important, your behind-the-scenes communication could be even more vital.
A customer makes a dinner reservation for two, and lets the host know that it’s his wife’s birthday. Who needs to know? The server? Definitely. The manager? Certainly, so they can wish her a happy birthday. The chef? Possibly, if the kitchen likes to do something special for birthdays!
In hospitality, we must always be thinking about who needs to know what in order to provide the best guest experience.
Efficiency
A day in a hospitality job can be fast-paced. You may have a number of guest requests to satisfy at once, plus backend work to complete like prep or sidework. How do you get it all done?
In hospitality, efficiency is the name of the game. You should always be asking yourself how you can make a job quicker or easier. What tasks can you batch together? In a kitchen, this could mean you never make a trip to the walk-in to restock one thing. You fill your arms up with 1/9th pans and refill them all at once. If you work in hotel room service, maybe you always do a circuit of the floor for dirty trays after you deliver a hot meal.
When you practice efficiency, you decrease the time it takes for all guests to get what they need. And that is a top tenet of customer service.
Cultural Sensitivity
In the hospitality space, we’re often serving travelers and tourists who come from a wide variety of cultures and countries. You could have guests from Florida and Finland, India and Indiana, Mexico and Myanmar all under your roof at once. And they’ll all have different expectations and preferences.
While you can’t always anticipate these differences—and you certainly don’t want to stereotype—it’s important to be open-minded to the many different people and customs that you’ll encounter, and prepare where you can.
During Ramadan, for example, Muslims fast from dawn until dusk each day. So your hotel could be prepared with a pre-dawn room service menu to let any observant guests have breakfast before the sun rises.
And if you get a request that you find odd, just remember that what’s strange to you is de rigueur to people of other cultures. It’s not your place to judge. It’s your place to make guests feel welcome.