Service experts realize the one true differentiator, the one characteristic that separates the average from the best, especially in a strained economic environment, is service - pure and simple. Professionals inside most industries are reminded of this everyday through an onslaught of readily available competitor data and various industry-tracking tools, which correlate the direct connection between customer service metrics and financial growth.
Industry Case Study: Hospitality
During the global economic crisis in 2009, USA Today published a front-page story that summer that highlighted the hospitality industry as one of the business segments suffering the most during that tough economic timeframe. As part of that story, the newspaper singled out that when you strip away all the bells and whistles of two competing businesses in the foodservice or hotel industry, the deciding factor between a family choosing one brand over the other was the known service provided.
As the general public shifted from an economic status of abundance to one of scarcity, people started assigning more value to the things they bought and did. They became much more cognizant of where they were going to spend their money, especially when it came to non-necessity services that required disposable income. Eating at a restaurant, staying at a hotel, going on a cruise, or gaming at a casino are not day-to-day basic needs. They are luxury items. And yet, even the more financially stable households began to assign a heightened worth to those services.
The delivery of an experience is more critical to the overall guest perception than anything else. In fact, the rest of the experience is purely “bricks and mortar” and will never be enough to separate the mediocre companies from the great ones. Brands who key in on this are able to leapfrog their competitors, based predominantly on their customer service approach. This is true for EVERY business and ANY industry.
As competitive businesses--big or small--owners should constantly practice in the world of separating themselves from the rest for any real hope of long-term profitability and sustainability. If customers leave the business with memorable experiences, they also leave with a desire to return and tell others about the brand.
Differentiation is the key.
Trends to Provide Rock Star Service
Here are some trends and suggestions to provide a differentiated service offering:
Hire “Right Fit” Talent
Unforgettable service experiences do not happen because of an initiative or a product, but because of a person. The deliverer matters most. Businesses need to ensure they have the right talent delivering the desired service. If a business hires employees who naturally do battle against the mundane, because that’s in their nature, authentic customer experiences are more likely to occur.
Teach Customer Obsession
The best way to influence the type of service desired is to consistently and methodically provide the philosophy to employees. Small businesses may not be creating training videos, manuals, formalized classes or elearning, but they can certainly spend quality time with each employee to talk about the desired customer service delivery with laser-like focus. Businesses should recommit and retrain every employee to become customer-obsessed.
Share Stories of Service Lore
By capturing & celebrating out-of-the-box initiatives that employees have delivered over time to create unforgettable memories, it will create an environment for other team members to seize a moment to go above and beyond to wow the customer.
Play Devil’s Advocate
Regardless of size, owners should convene regularly with the staff to discuss ways to differentiate the brand from others. Businesses should seek out opportunities to break the traditional systems in a perpetual quest to make the customer experience better.
Treat Customers Like Guests
Employees need to treat every single customer they come into contact with as if they are a VIP or a best friend – the experience will practically be guaranteed. One way to make customers feel special is to treat them like they are guests in your home – the way your mother made you feel every time you walked into her house.
Avoid the Forgettable
The baseline for service has been raised. Average is no longer good enough – it’s forgettable. Excellence is the new Average. Four-letter words in business, like “Fine”, “Good” and “Okay” should be avoided at all costs – they will eventually put a company out of business. Businesses need to learn to ask specific questions of customers about the experience and listen for these words that scream of mediocrity.
Be the Chocolate
To survive, companies need to take risks in delivering a product or service with an approach that is fresh and unpredictable. To create differentiation, brands have to go against the societal grain and swim upstream while everyone else takes the path of least resistance. Companies should find a novel and unique way to deliver the product offering. In a vanilla ice cream world, people need a little "rocky road" in their life – be the chocolate!
Surprise & Delight the Customer
People love to be positively surprised. It makes consumers feel like they’re special. When considering service practices, businesses should place a great deal of attention and detail on the employees’ abilities to surprise and delight the customers. To create memories, brands should do something for customers that is customized, personalized and completely unexpected.
Implement Reward Mechanisms
What gets measured gets done. Companies that are interested in developing a sustainable service culture should recognize and reward employees when they do something for the customer that creates an unforgettable experience, especially if it was something above and beyond the norm. Recognition leads to repetition.
Study the Service Veterans
There’s a reason why experiential experts continue to talk about Starbucks, Apple, Southwest Airlines, Chick-fil-A, Hard Rock Cafe, Zappos, Nordstrom, and Disney. There is real value in studying the results these world-class brands deliver through their customer service. Small business owners should read and observe successful service cultures to seek out ideas that can be replicated in their own business.
Hang with the Competition
School is never out for the professional. Businesses should not rely on just their own knowledge and intuition, rather owners need to keep their fingers on the pulse of the industry. Business leaders should consider joining industry networking associations to understand what the competitors are doing, then do something more unique than the rest.
Don’t Forget the Basics
As important as it is to wow the customers, businesses need to make sure they do not forgo the fundamentals. All employees should:
Be ever-present; stop any insignificant action when customers are around and focus exclusively on them
Greet people with an authentic introduction based on the customer versus a memorized script
Move at lightening speed in response to every customer’s request, even if they are the only people around
Business Case Study: Island Bay Resort
Check out this small business case study from a little-known hotel in the Florida Keys:
Cradled just south of Florida’s southern mainland tip lies Tavernier, an extension of Key Largo in the upper Florida Keys. Former head of training for Hard Rock International, Mike Shipley and his wife Carol, took over a flailing 10-room hotel in December 2000 called, Island Bay Resort. Almost everything about the property, except for the spectacular Gulf of Mexico view of the ocean, was a travesty when they purchased it.
Certainly a labor of love for the Shipley’s, the new owners attacked every guest physical touch point of the hotel from inside and outside paint jobs, customized photography & artwork on the room walls, new roofs throughout the property, complete room furniture swaps, upgraded amenities, all-new native landscaping, custom-built room decks & beach furniture, and overhauled gravel & brick parking spots. Even the beach had to be completely re-imagined to provide the escapist oasis people had come to expect of the Florida Keys. And yet, all of that didn’t come close to the thing the guests loved the most about their stay: the service.
No doubt, having a background in hospitality influenced Mike & Carol in their basic service approach, but they made a cognizant decision to raise the bar and truly blow people away with an authentic service-oriented experience that they could not find elsewhere. Their focused approach included laser-like attention to the smallest of details, a sense of urgency in responding to any requests and personalized attention to every guest…all of which combined to reap monumental rewards; to the tune of increased double-digit, top-line sales since they acquired the resort. Every year, since the Shipley’s took over the stagnant property, they have delivered year-on-year positive sales, with the exceptions of 2001, which is when all travel-related businesses took a significant dip, due to 9/11 and 2020, due to the global pandemic, when so much travel stopped. That success doesn’t happen because of a paint job and some plants.
TripAdvisor.com, the most used travel website in the world in assisting customers in gathering travel information and posting opinion reviews of specific travel-related content, began to take notice. The overwhelming amount of positive feedback posted from elated guests who had stayed on the property certainly raved about many of the items I mentioned above, but one of the main reasons they felt obligated to post a review on TripAdvisor in the first place was their love of, and loyalty for, the owners. Mike & Carol’s names are almost always mentioned in customer reviews about their resort stay. Their service culture approach paid off…big time.
In 2011, Island Bay Resort was awarded #15 by TripAdvisor on their coveted list of Top 25 hotels in the United States. Compared to the other well-known brands and large hotel properties that made up the rest of the list, this was a huge honor for these small business owners. Almost immediately, incremental requests about the hotel came barreling in. People wanted to know about this hidden gem in the Upper Keys. Consequently, NBC’s The Today Show produced a special on the Top 25 hotels, which specifically highlighted Island Bay Resort. This virtuous circle increased the occupancy of the little hotel, which led to more positive reviews and eventually culminated in the resort landing at #7 on TripAdvisor’s “Best Small Hotel” list, the following year.
Mike & Carol Shipley are the poster children for how a business can be revolutionized, re-created and maintained. With a lot of hard work and a focused service philosophy that is unheralded, they have created a service culture that rocks.
Those that aspire to change their service culture need only spend a little energy and focus on their staff-to-customer interaction to truly separate themselves from the rest to become memorable.
Are you in need of amping up your customer service culture and the awesome results that come with that?
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