Your company needs more hospitality.
II’ll bet that I can boil down your company strategy into one of two areas. 1) You want more customers or 2) You want to keep your current customers. It doesn’t really matter what business you are in, you probably want one or both of the above and are working hard to attain and retain your best sources of revenue.
Take a look up from the device you are reading this on and look around your place of work. Look at everything your customer interacts with on their way to doing business with you. What do the doors feel like when your customer opens them to see you? What does the voice sound like that answers their phone call? How does the lighting look as they sit in your waiting room? What does your bathroom smell like? What does your customer see as their first impression and what will they take away as their last impression?
As a restaurant owner for nine years, a hotel manager for 12 years before that, and an adjunct professor at University of Denver’s Fritz Nobel hospitality school, I can tell you that the best companies out there, looked at those questions above through a lens of hospitality. Hospitality isn’t food, beverage, or clean hotel sheets, it’s making someone feel welcome as a guest. Whether into your home, your office, your website, or your board meeting, it’s making the people that you’ve asked to join you feel as though they are cared for and special.
Here’s the thing you should know. Every single one of your customers is wearing an invisible sign that says “I want to feel special”. Underneath that sign is a running list of ways to accomplish that feeling “I want to have a choice”, “I want to feel included”, “I want to reach my potential”. Everything that your customer sees is an answer from your company directly to your customer indicating whether or not you can read these signs.
If you engage in viewing your business through the lens of hospitality, the possibilities to connect with your customer in a way that makes them feel special are simple and plentiful. Want to create an unforgettable experience for your customers? Start with a few simple, but powerful strategies:
Use your five senses and review your customer experience from start to finish. What is your customer seeing, hearing, and feeling the moment they connect with your business? Walk into your reception area with fresh eyes each day. Is there someone smiling to say hello to you? What does the clutter behind your desk say to those who enter your office?
Train your team to care, and this starts with you. No one starts a job hoping to fail. They want to belong, to contribute to something great. They start with the hope of being a part of a winning team. It takes a little extra attention from you to get them from eager on day one to eager and participating by day five.
Inspect what you expect. Delegation and empowerment are crucial to your success as a leader, but you have to follow up and hold your team accountable for the standards you set.
When you prioritize hospitality, your customers don’t just spend with you once, they return, they brag to their friends about you, and they recruit new customers for you. So take a moment today to step into their shoes and ask “Am I making them feel special?”. Now is the perfect time to start.