Customer service is the backbone of the hospitality industry. It is the service that makes or breaks a hospitality business. The expectations of consumers of service are changing. In this article, we bring to you 9 crucial tips for excellent customer service in the hospitality industry.
So, all the hotel managers and hospitality professionals can find something interesting here to help them impress their hotel guests. These are some of the tips and ideas to enhance the hotel guest experience. After all, an experience to remember is what service in the hospitality industry is all about.
So, ladies and gentlemen, here we present 9 excellent customer service tips in the hospitality industry.
These tips to impress hotel guests would help the hotel managers ensure their guests leave with sweet memories and recommend the hotel to others.
Most hotel managers are already aware of the importance of service in the hospitality industry.
The expectations are changing now. As Hospitality managers, you are expected to create delight at every customer touch point.
We will present a few of the important tips here that will help hospitality businesses offer excellent customer service.
1. Creating Emotional Triggers for the delight of Hotel Guests
For excellent customer service in the hospitality industry, it is important to create emotional triggers.
It is important to create wonderful memories.
Trust-based customer service and conveying a sense of belonging can do wonders.
2. Use New Ways to impress your Guests during Hotel Stays
It is extremely important for all hospitality businesses to be consistent.
Customers attach to the brand and customer service should be able to do justice to the brand every single time.
As an example, regular customers of top hotel chains are more attached to the brand and consistency of service.
May it be the warm cookie during check-in, the favourite coconut welcome drink, items on the menu or drinks in the mini-bar. Consistency is the key to customer loyalty.
Create delight by giving freebies, loyalty bonuses, 1 plus 1 offers and more. You are constrained only by budget and imagination. So, start thinking out of the box.
3. Embrace Technology to impress your hospitality customers
Technology is helping in redefining the customer service experience in the hospitality industry. It triggers various hospitality ideas for guests.
The introduction of Artificial Intelligence in the hospitality industry promises so many exciting things from smart rooms to an enhanced customer service experience. The opportunities are limitless.
The use of Chatbots for exquisite customer service is one of the examples of how the landscape of hospitality is being changed by technology.
4. Listen to the Customers
It is important to listen to customers at all times.
It is often said that if you listen to customer complaints empathetically, they are more receptive to the solution offered.
Moreover, active listening helps to avoid any miscommunication.
Active listening also ensures that the expectations of the customers are clearly understood.
Listening to the customers also helps hospitality businesses in providing a more robust and innovative customer experience.
5. Create a Great First Impression to wow your hotel guests
Creating a great first experience is crucial for excellent customer service. This is the first thing you need to do to make a guest happy in a hotel or any hospitality organisation.
It’s the first impression that counts. It creates a momentum that ensures the customer takes all services positively.
If the first impression in the minds of customers is positive, they often complain less.
Creating a great first expression gets the top priority in the article. And, we completely agree.
There are a few things to take care of to ensure a great impression is created at the time of the first meeting with the customer.
- Making Eye contact
- Having a positive body language
- A welcoming smile can do wonders
- The right selection of words
- Active listening
- Right decor
- A gift or a welcome drink
And so on. There are many ways to create the first expression. This is crucial.
6. Take regular Feedback and Act on it to Build Relations
This again is crucial to keep impressing your hotel guests by upgrading your service standards.
Feedback and acting on feedback are some of the most important hotel customer service tips.
This point can be tied to our earlier point of consistency. It is extremely important to know how the customers feel and if they are going to come back or not.
The feedback is extremely important and it is equally important to move out from the same old feedback forms.
It is actually possible to take feedback without actively making customers write notes. Technology helps us to connect comfortably with a customer at every possible touchpoint.
As stressed in an article by The Balance, feedback is extremely crucial to building long-term relationships with customers.
7. Make the Customers Feel special.
This point is very important in the hospitality industry.
Hospitality businesses are selling services most of the time. Customers are sure to carry experiences and memories rather than physical products back home.
Thus it is important to make customers feel special. They will remember every time they were made to feel special and they will come back searching for the same memory.
8. Benchmarking Method to improve Customer service
Customer Service benchmarking is extremely important.
The process involves studying competition and the environment to establish the best practices and improvement opportunities.
Visiting various hospitality organisations, assessing competition, integrating customer feedback into the model and acting on the revelations can do wonders for customer service.
Benchmarking can help immensely in raising the bar and moving the curve of innovation.
9. Stay flexible and be innovative in creating delight for your Customers
It is important to be extremely flexible in order to serve customers.
customer service in the hospitality industry depends a lot on staying flexible and continuously innovating.
Lots of hospitality organisations become rigid to ensure orderliness in service patterns.
However, flexibility holds the key to ensuring excellent customer service in the hospitality industry. Not every customer is the same and thus there can’t be standard practice.
Thus, training and empowering employees is important as that helps develop a more flexible and innovative workforce.
Conclusion.
Since quality is the most important factor when it comes to hotel services, here are some tips recapped from the post that will keep you on top!
Check these excellent customer service examples in hospitality to make hotel guests feel special.
- Communicate with guests at all times
- It is important to use powerful words like Thank you, apologies, appreciated etc.
- Respond quickly to guests with prompt services
- Always make the customers feel appreciated
- Listen to the feedback and strive to improve the next time
Excellent customer service in the hotel industry is the secret sauce to the success of the organisation. Customer service is the most significant component of any client interaction type of business like hospitality.
Customer service in the hospitality industry is the make-or-break factor for all hospitality businesses. Various sectors of the hospitality industry can be connected by a single factor- providing excellent service to customers.
The thought process and strategies for delivering service have to be reevaluated for a competitive advantage.
It is often said that organisations should take care of employees and that employees will take care of the customers.
It is through empowering employees that all the above tips can be executed in the most effective manner.
Improving customer service effectively must be a part of your revenue management strategy for a better hospitality business.
It is only through high-quality customer service that someone can build a successful and sustainable business.
And, this is even more important for the hospitality industry.
Hope you liked our tips for providing excellent customer service in the hospitality industry. Use these with your existing recipe for customer success for a sustainable business. Caring for the customers and building a customer-centric brand is the only tested model to sustain success in this knowledge economy.
I agree that top-notch customer service is very important to maintain consistent business growth, especially in the hospitality industry. So I would hire people for my restaurant, I would understand how they should undergo training first. I wonder if there is an online platform for these resources.
Thanks a lot for commenting and giving your insights. Yes, training is crucial to ensure a top notch customer service. There are many course on top online learning portals like Udemy, both free and paid. There are other providers within hospitality niche like hospitality-schools and few others for specific positions like thewaiteracademy, your firm waittrainer and more.
It was interesting to know that customer service is the make-or-break factor for all hospitality companies. My friend wants to improve their PR services. I should advise him to turn to a hospitality industry PR service with positive reviews from clients.
Thanks a lot Victoria for your inputs regarding customer service in hospitality firms.