Whether you sling hash, manage a reservation desk or plan high-end travel excursions, you’re part of the service industry—a sector that employs nearly 130 million people in the United States. In hospitality, we tend to think of ourselves as experts on service because it’s the essence of what we do; it’s spelled out in our industry’s eponymous name, defined as “the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.”
Yet, as many customers know, a ready smile and an “always say yes” policy don’t guarantee great service. Why then do so many companies get it wrong? It’s simple: They get stuck on standardizing service behaviors, instead of standardizing a way of thinking and perceiving customer interactions so employees can make decisions that truly meet customer needs.
Guests have lost trust in service
This distinction is crucial in today’s world of constantly available data, where Google, TripAdvisor and Yelp have already “served” most of your company’s customers before they even make their first contact with an actual employee. Every guest who approaches you with a question has likely spent their time trying to find an answer elsewhere (i.e. meet their needs), which means that your customer service professionals are usually starting interactions with slightly annoyed customers.
But why will customers do anything else before they finally contact you? Human nature. Every service interaction requires the customer to give up some degree of control over the outcome, which creates fear of the unknown and anxiety; we don’t like this feeling. So while most companies view delivering great customer service as a series of steps, at its heart, it’s about establishing trust. And trust comes from reliably demonstrating you can meet customer needs.
Why service standards fail
Everyone agrees that great customer service is about meeting customer needs, but here’s the rub: customers aren’t always able to articulate what they really want. If you want to deliver top-notch service, it’s critical to get customers to clearly identify their goals and objectives. But service employees who follow standards often don’t ask questions that clarify customers’ true needs. Always saying ‘yes’ may be your service standard, but when things go wrong—and ‘no’ is the only answer—this reinforces customers’ mistrust and their belief that they can’t depend on anyone else to meet their needs.
For example, “I need an early check-in” is not a guest need; it’s a request the guest thinks they need. However, “I need an early check-in because I have to attend a meeting and will need a space to change prior to my meeting beginning” is a clear need for which your service staff can provide solutions (temporary space, a locker room, etc.)—even if early check-in is not possible.
Standards are vitally important, as they reflect the experience your company is creating for guests and provide guidance for meeting those expectations. However, it’s impossible to write a standard for every possible interaction. This is why it’s necessary to coach, train, and develop your guest-facing employees to handle complex situations, and to give them the freedom to meet needs within the framework of your hotel’s standards.
Why can’t my star performers be models for our service standards?
Good question. This seems like a no brainer, but the problem is that when you ask people who are great at working with guests how they do this, they can describe what behaviors they do, but are often unable to articulate why they do them or why certain behaviors are important for delivering great service.
Sticking to a single script for great service may work in one interaction but the same behavior doesn’t work in every situation. If service staff don’t understand why context matters, the point is missed that great service is a personalized meeting of needs. Team members need clear, concise explanations, and tools that promote critical thinking so they can start to better understand why the stars are stars, and how they can get there.
The challenge: standardize critical thinking for service excellence
Of course you want all of your employees to be like your star-performers, but turning their behaviors into standards doesn’t work. In fact, few organizations are equipping their front lines personnel with the knowledge and tools needed to solve complex problems and deliver great customer service. They often rely on luck, not strategic intention, to transmit valuable service thinking to employees. Maybe, as your best service employees train their direct reports on the job, those staff “pick up” the unspoken ways they deliver top-notch service. But this approach is haphazard and unreliable.
Instead, companies need to provide the words—and ways of thinking—that allow star performers to describe what they do and why, building a common language all employees can speak. Training in critical thinking, backed by actionable frameworks, allows team members to engage more, and take more ownership, in the service delivery process. And it connects what your people are doing with research-based evidence that supports its efficacy and importance for service.
So why don’t companies institutionalize this kind of critical thinking? Because finding the language and approach can be difficult, while standards feel familiar and safe. Yet, by neglecting the why of great service in favor of the how, companies will continue to get it wrong and leave a huge opportunity on the table for delivering service excellence beyond expectations.
Contributed by Elizabeth Martyn, author of Service Excellence On-Demand Training, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, Ithaca, New York