By Sarah Cade
Why is customer experience so important?
The notion of driving effective customer service is to build a customer-first hotel in which all staff work towards a common purpose – championing the customer experience.
Hiring the right people in the right seats while developing a customer-first ethos is one of the musts of enhancing that experience. You need to surround yourself with a team of people who possess the skills of connecting and nurturing key relationships with your guests.
Customer service should not be thought of as a transaction, but more a journey that your guests can reflect on after the experience with your hotel team.
A great customer journey often commences with the name of the team member who went above and beyond for your guest.
How can we become better champions of the customer experience?
We are always learning, and I continue to learn from the hospitality professionals I speak to daily. Below I’ll outline a few of the areas you can make a change today.
Build genuine relationships
The objective of providing an excellent customer experience is to foster loyalty at your hotel, guesthouse, or public house.
You achieve this by working tirelessly on building genuine relationships with your guests. It takes time and energy, however, by harnessing the customer experience you create advocacy. This advocacy helps grow your business through word-of-mouth referrals while concurrently generating repeat business.
Building genuine relationships requires an authentic effort to get to know your client and building your business around them. Your guests need to understand that they are central to your property’s decision making and not simply a number on the bottom line.
Adopt a more resolute attitude
Customer experience is what you achieve for your customers. If you are an aspiring customer experience champion, you need to be an agile thinker and willing to think-outside-the-box on how you can provide an unforgettable experience for your guests.
It is an attitude that wants to provide solutions for your client at every opportunity, not by simply referring to a property policy but by thinking how to provide choices through flexibility and finding ways to never have to use the word “No”.
Empathy should be a ritual
The best employees, that connect well with your guests, have already begun exercising empathy.
They are often your best listeners and endeavour to understand how the guest feels after a poor experience. It is only natural that service issues arise; a mix-up over preferred rooms or overlooked dietary requirement for example.
and during these times your team needs to establish a sense of connection and trust with the customer. The best way to achieve this, is to be an empathic listener and become a customer experience advocate through the guest’s experiences with your business
Focus on building meaningful relationships with your guests and let Rezcontrol run your hotel property.
You can find out more about Rezcontrol on the Avondata website. The next step would be to book an online demonstration and let us show you that the proof is in the product.
Alternatively, please contact the sales team on 0330 223 1456 or email sales@avondata.co.uk.