Overlooking Customer Service

By Josh Clifton

If you’re in the hospitality industry you know how important customer service is. It’s because that’s all the customer knows. They don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, or who your suppliers are, or the problems you’re having with your staff. To them your venue is a place where they go to enjoy themselves and receive the same type of service they received last time. When that service goes down hill – they leave.

So…

How are you actively implementing techniques to train your staff in specifically – customer service, or as I like to call it ‘people skills’. It’s a great goal to want to give the BEST customer service possible, but what is your BEST training technique to do this? In my opinion it’s hard to train a person in ‘people skills’ and if you have to,  it can take a lifetime – they either have it or they don’t.

All is not lost and there are ways to speed up your team to really get in tune with your customer.

Below is my way of determining how suitable a person is for customer relations:

1. Have them buddy up with your best customer relations

2. Lead by example and show the standard you expect from your team

3. When a problem arises ask your staff to put themselves in the customers shoes in the scenario

– How would you like to be treated here?

– What would you expect as the customer?

– What do you think would ‘sweeten the deal’ and leave the customer feeling acknowledged and satisfied with the outcome.

There will always be people you can’t please and no matter how hard you try (even from the most experienced staff members) it feels like you can’t win. But you can focus on the other 99% of people who are here to have a great time.

Action List

– Have a team meeting and ask your staff what ‘customer service’ means to them and share your ideas

– Then brain storm ideas on how you can implement a customer service training program that all staff could enjoy and work well with one another.

I truly believe that any industry that has a very high interaction with customers ultimately needs constant evaluation and training methods to stay in touch with customers. With so many new venues opening up around you, it all comes down to giving the ultimate customer experience which trumps the rest!

I look forward to hearing from you!

To your success!

Josh

Want more information, strategys and tactics just like this? 

Josh writes a great blog at www.masterbar.com.au you can also find him on Facebook  ‘MasterBar Coaching’ in your FACEBOOK search