Hospitality and Public Relations
For the last several years I have been an avid reader of PR Fuel. Recently its author Ben Silverman described his experiences with two parts of the hospitality world, specifically, hotels and restaurants.
Silverman lauded two managers, one from a boutique hotel and one from a fine dining restaurant who understand the short communication channel between online forums, blogs and sites such as TripAdvisor and Chowhound and one’s hotel, inn or restaurant. Specifically, he lauded the hotel manager for responding on TripAdvisor apologizing for customers’ bad experiences and then celebrated the restaurant owner who responded to an e-mail with a personal phone call to set up an evening’s celebration.
If more managers and owners would realize how important monitoring these forums is, the more who would see a dedicated customer group who acts like a loyalty club. I had a client who in the past when asked why he didn’t have a dedicated customer service rep (who followed up on results for tech service visits), “It’s too expensive.” My response is it’s too expensive not to! Why spend more and more dollars to acquire new customers when causing your current ones to delight in your service and recommend you is not only more sound but less costly? This isn’t a new idea, but a very old one. The jeweler I worked with 40 years ago provided free jewelry repairs, even it the piece didn’t come from his store…and guess where the customer went when they needed a new piece of jewelry?
When I was Director of Business Development for Maverick Southern Kitchens, I lead the team that created Maverick Collection, a fine dining loyalty program for the restaurants of the group. Not only is the loyalty program still around, but it’s still gaining members (after 7 years!) and is the best channel the company has to promote their special events and properties. People are loyal to those businesses who care about them and show it.
Everyone wants the best service. The fact that service is provided by humans means that sometimes we make mistakes. Standing up, apologizing, fixing the mistake and making sure the system is not broken or that this was just a one time glitch, will go a long way in keeping transparency and authenticity in your business.
Yes, sometimes you do have really difficult customers for whom nothing will ever go right and when you get one you are justified in firing them. Just make sure that when you do, you have tried everything you can to fix the situation. Don’t jump to a conclusion to fire the customer when your business is the side of the equation that isn’t balanced.
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