Hospitality is nothing more than making guests feel invited and welcome. It’s both the most critical and most elusive aspect of customer service within any industry that deals directly with its customer base. How your customers feel about their experience is almost more important than the actual product or interaction they have with you.
Nordstrom, a major department store chain, had for many years, a simple policy about returns: They didn’t ask you why you were returning an item. They didn’t care if it had been in your closet for five years or five minutes. In one legendary instance, it didn’t matter that Nordstrom didn’t sell tires or that the tires had been bought from a previous occupant of the building — Nordstrom took the tires back. The customer was unhappy with their purchase, and customer satisfaction was a driving tenet of the company’s brand. Why? Because a happy customer is a repeat customer. A happy customer is one who enjoys their ongoing relationship with your company.
Seth Godin, a major influencer of modern marketing styles, often reduces his messaging down to a simple truism: Making something that people can interact with — share, talk about, believe in — is the only truly successful marketing method left. You can’t fool people anymore. You have to learn how to be honest with them and actively interact with them.
Building Trust
For customers, trust forms the foundation of brand awareness. Can customers trust you? Do they get a warm and fuzzy feeling when they interact with you? In the hospitality market, you can earn trust by engaging with customers in meaningful ways. To put it bluntly: Your customers are not at home, but they want to “feel” at home — even if it takes a professional team of a thousand or more to facilitate this level of engagement.
Relationships thrive on a transmission of value from each participant. While there are underlying business transactions within the hospitality industry’s interactions with its customers, how customers feel about their experience determines the value of those transactions. The final assessment of this experience is more than a simple accounting of all the lavish and breathtaking moments. It can — and often does — come down to the smaller details. For instance, you can have the finest view, the most luxurious bedding, and an Olympic-sized tub, but a customer won’t come back if housekeeping ignores their request for extra towels.
The Brand Is Based on a Relationship
For many years, the Ritz Carlton hotel chain held a reputation for its effusive and tightly scripted exchanges with its customers. It built a wildly successful brand on the basis of providing customers with the same experience every time in every hotel. But, as the clientele changed, the chain learned that its set scripting was rubbing customers the wrong way. They perceived the Ritz Carlton experience as stuck — it was always going to be exactly the same experience. To a younger generation, this came off as inauthentic and fake. They wanted real connections when they interacted with the staff. The hotel chain re-evaluated its script and its understanding of its relationship with its customers and adapted. It learned how to rebuild its relationship with its guests.
Therein lies the secret to understanding the elusively critical aspect of customer service within the hospitality industry. A brand’s strength comes from both its familiarity and its individual character. Guests return to a brand again and again not because it is exactly the same experience every time, but because the experience affords a constant level of quality. In other words, there will always be enough towels; the view will always be good; the staff will always have a recommendation about something on the menu; and every visit will be like returning home.
Learn more about Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s MBA with an emphasis in Hospitality Marketing Online.
Sources:
Forbes: Your Customer Service Is Your Branding — the Ritz-Carlton Case Study
Jacksonville Business Journal: Nordstrom customer service tales not just legend