This May marks my 15-year anniversary with Signature Worldwide. In case you aren’t familiar with our organization, we are a training solutions company. My primary function for the last 15 years has been to work with hotel associates, mainly in the reservations or front desk departments. The training we provide to hotels focuses on improving employee performance—any time the phone rings or a guest approaches the front desk, we want to make that experience better.
In addition to hotel employees, I also have trained agents who rent or sell heavy equipment—things such as backhoes or tractors. I’ve trained employees who work in a call center who rent RVs to folks attending special events such as Coachella or NASCAR races. I’ve even trained the agents who sell and deliver spa experiences.
While the industries of my classroom participants may change on a daily basis, one thing has remained the same: What differentiates one organization from another is the people. It is the people employed by these organizations who can either make or break the customer’s experience, and it only takes a few sentences for those employees to make that difference.
Heartfelt Customer Service
So how do you ensure your employees will create great customer experiences?
First, make sure you are hiring employees who feel that sense of great customer service in their hearts. You can train nearly everyone to work a computer or a cash register, but you cannot teach heartfelt customer service. How can you be sure you are hiring for that? You might try something like this recent exercise I did.
I was delivering a customer service class to a group of hotel employees. I challenged them to write the “perfect Trip Advisor review” for their hotel. If they could write a review to include all of the things they wanted their guests to experience, what would it say?
The responses varied, but what pleased me was that several of the employees wrote about the staff, not the complimentary Wi-Fi or free breakfast (nearly every hotel offers that!). Their responses included things such as:
“The staff was friendly and informative.”
“Loved the staff.
“The staff made me feel welcome.”
“It felt like my home away from home.”
It was obvious to me that these hotel employees are in the hospitality industry for the right reasons—to deliver exceptional customer service and create great customer experiences.
Ask the Right Questions
Finding those employees who are in it for the right reasons is just one part of training for great customer experiences. You also need to make sure your employees are asking the right questions of your customers, the questions that allow them to personalize the experience.
For example, a great question could be:
In the hospitality industry: “What are your plans while visiting our hotel?”
For the heavy equipment company: “What kind of job are you doing at the construction site?”
For the RV rental: “What comforts of home would you like to take with you on vacation?”
For a day spa: “What treatments have you enjoyed previously?”
Asking a few questions and identifying your customers’ wants and needs will allow your employees to start a dialogue with your customers. That dialogue accomplishes two objectives that can lead to a positive, unique experience for your customers:
1. It eliminates the feeling of apathy that is pervasive in most service-providing businesses today. Just by asking a question and listening to the answer, your employees will be showing an interest in your customers that isn’t often present in this high-tech, eyes-focused-on-mobile-phone or tablet-texting world today.
2. It enables your employees to uncover some information about your customers that may help them to personalize their experience at your place of business. If they are staying at your hotel and want to see the sights, your employees can give them some great personal recommendations they might not have known about. If they are at your spa, your agents know best what treatments will help the specific concern that customer has.
Your employees are the experts customers are hoping for. And if your employees feel confident in asking some questions, and making some recommendations, your customers will appreciate them for it. Those same customers will appreciate your business for setting itself apart.
The simple secrets I have learned, that I hope you now have learned, too, are to find the right people with customer service in their heart and then give them the tools, confidence, and opportunities they need to ask the right questions and make the personalized recommendations to connect with your customers. Your business will stand out from the rest because you will see happier employees and happier customers.
Norma Jarman is a Training account manager at Signature Worldwide, a Dublin, OH-based company offering sales and customer service training, marketing, and mystery shopping services for a variety of service-based industries. For more information, call 800.398.0518 or visit www.signatureworldwide.com. You also can connect with Signature on Twitter @SignatureWorld and on Facebook.
