Mr. Curtin

Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt

Service Elevated! Seven Simple Ways to Elevate Customer Service

By Steve Curtin, Founder, Steve Curtin Customer Enthusiast!

Earlier this year, American Express conducted a survey exploring attitudes and preferences toward customer service. The survey revealed seven in ten Americans (70%) are willing to spend an average of 13% more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service.

Even so, the same survey indicated that six in ten Americans (60%) believe businesses haven’t increased their focus on providing good customer service. Among this group, 26% think companies are actually paying less attention to service.

In my work, I routinely encounter the following paradox: “Why is it that businesses consistently claim to value customers, yet inconsistently deliver exceptional customer service?”

I’ll answer that question later but for now consider these three truths about exceptional customer service:

1. It involves job essence. Every employee’s job is made up of both job function (the duties and tasks associated with a job role) and job essence (an employee’s purpose or highest priority which, for employees at most companies, is to create a delighted customer).
2. It’s voluntary. While obtaining a valid method of payment (a job function) is required, smiling or making eye contact (job essence) is voluntary.
3. It’s free. While employees are paid to perform job functions, there’s no extra charge to smile, make eye contact, or add enthusiasm to their voices.

Most employees in most service organizations are unaware of the above truths simply because no one’s mentioned them. Instead, most managers spend time talking about job function, procedures, and operational efficiency while scrutinizing hours to schedule, forecasts, and profit and loss statements.

The result is employees who are blissfully unaware of the subtle opportunities they forfeit daily to demonstrate job essence, elevate the quality of their personal customer service, and make lasting positive impressions on the customers they serve.

During my 20-year career at Marriott International, I identified seven simple ways employees can incorporate job essence into their daily job functions:

1. Express genuine interest in serving customers

This exceeds the basic customer service expectations of the job role. For instance, in a hotel setting, after checking-in a guest, most front desk agents will say, “Enjoy your stay with us. If there’s anything else we can do for you, don’t hesitate to call.”

While there’s nothing wrong with this response, if the guest’s welcome ends there, it’s routine and unlikely to leave a positive lasting impression.

Consider these supplemental actions intended to make a guest feel welcome and leave a positive lasting impression:

• Upon guest check-in, placing a call to the room to verify that the guest is pleased with her accommodations and later following up with a hand-written note, welcoming the guest and providing your name and contact information for future assistance.

• Sometimes expressing genuine interest involves demonstrating care and concern. Cosset guests. I love this word. It means to pamper, to treat with excessive indulgence.

A few years ago on a United Airlines flight, a flight attendant hung my tweed sport coat towards the back of the first class cabin. It wasn’t until I’d deplaned and left the airport that I realized I had left my sport coat behind.

I then called United’s lost and found department at the airport and let them know what had happened along with my flight and arrival gate numbers. We agreed that, since I had another flight in two days, it would be easier for them to hold the coat at my arrival gate for me to retrieve in person rather than go through the hassle of shipping it to me.

When I arrived at the gate two days later, it was unmanned so I took it upon myself to look for my sport coat. I first checked a large locker near the service counter. Nothing. Then I checked several exposed cubbies. Nothing. Lastly, I opened a drawer behind the service counter. There, I found my coat crammed in among pens, scissors, and other supplies.

It looked as though it had been slept in for the two nights we had been separated. While I accept full responsibility for leaving my coat behind, I expect a business partner to do a much better job of handling (cosseting) my personal property.

In a hotel setting, most customers appreciate when their luggage is thoughtfully handled with extra care. Guests who utilize valet parking will value employees who drive their cars responsibly and pay attention to detail by (if adjusted) returning seats and rear-view mirrors to their original positions. And fine dining restaurant guests will appreciate having their chairs pulled out and the waiter’s efficient use of a crumber to tidy the dining table between courses.

Sure, employees must read their audience. The expectations of a twenty-something student will differ from a forty-something professional. Although, when the opportunity does present itself, cosseting guests will make a positive lasting impression. Customers simply are not accustomed to receiving this level of attention and care.

2. Offer sincere and specific compliments to customers when the opportunity genuinely presents itself

Front desk agents routinely obtain a valid method of payment prior to issuing a room key. In so doing, they are performing a required job function.

If the desk clerk was intentional about demonstrating job essence then, while obtaining a method of payment, she might notice and compliment the guest on his necktie saying, “That’s a lovely tie. It matches your suit nicely. Who is the designer?”

The guest will be flattered that she noticed and a positive lasting impression will have been made.

3. Share unique knowledge

Unique knowledge differs from job knowledge. Job knowledge is expected of the employee and, generally speaking, is transactional. Unique knowledge is unexpected and has the potential to enliven an otherwise predictable customer service encounter.

For instance, a typical restaurant waiter might say, “Our signature appetizer is Pâté de Foie Gras. May I interest you in an order?”

As a result, he has shared job knowledge with his guests and may or may not make an impression—or a sale. Consider how the same information might be conveyed together with some unexpected and interesting unique knowledge:

“Our executive chef trained at the prestigious Restaurant School in Philadelphia and traveled to France to refine her knowledge of French delicacies such as truffles, escargot, and foie gras. In fact, our Pâté de Foie Gras is our signature appetizer. May I tempt you with an order?”

Which approach might move you to order the Pâté de Foie Gras? Me too.

4. Convey authentic enthusiasm, whether animated or reserved, for serving customers

Most omelet makers wear a white kitchen apron while preparing made-to-order omelets for guests at the omelet station on a breakfast buffet.

Several years ago, I ordered an omelet from a cook named Ulysses at the Atlanta Airport Marriott. As I awaited my omelet, I noticed that his starched, white apron contained a meticulously pressed accordion-like pattern. It was so unique that I just had to ask him about it. He told me that each morning before work he pressed the unique pattern into his apron in order to enliven his uniform and spark conversations with hotel guests. And the enthusiasm that he put into his uniform added to the uniqueness of the service experience.

5. Use appropriate humor

They say that laughter is the shortest distance between two people. Look for opportunities to enliven routine and mundane interactions with humor.

Consider a typical hotel automated wake-up call script: “Good morning. Today’s weather forecast calls for partly sunny skies, breezy, with a high temperature of 82 degrees. Thank you for choosing the XYZ hotel.”

Now consider interjecting a little humor into an otherwise staid and predictable practice: (Imagine the voice of an English butler.) “ Good morning. I’m so sorry to disturb you, but it appears to be morning. Very inconvenient, I agree. I believe it is the rotation of the earth that is to blame.”

The first example evokes a yawn while the second inspires a chuckle. Clientele differs from business to business so use good judgment. But do look for opportunities to use appropriate humor to make lasting positive impressions on your customers.

6. Provide pleasant surprises

The unexpected nature of surprises tends to leave a lasting impression - so make sure they’re pleasant.

For my 40th birthday, my wife and I stayed at Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip. Shortly after check-in, an amenity was delivered to our room. It contained a small gift and a hand-written note from Joni, our front desk agent, wishing me a Happy Birthday and a memorable weekend in Las Vegas.

A friend recently shared a term with me that reinforces the concept of providing pleasant surprises: lagniappes. These are the unexpected “little extras” that may delight customers. Lagniappes are the 13th bagel in a baker’s dozen, the mint on the pillow or the single, bite-sized hors d’oeuvres that arrive unexpectedly at your table—a memorable “little extra” from the chef.

In the hospitality industry, you don’t have the luxury to control unpleasant surprises. However, you can influence pleasant surprises—but only if you’re intentional about providing them.

7. Deliver service heroics when necessary

Service heroics require employees to go beyond the typical job duties that are expected of their job role.

Hotel personnel typically respond to a guest’s request for an alternative room due to smell, location, or view by identifying an alternate room and sending a staff member to the original room with a set of keys to the new room.

Delivering service heroics requires going a step further. It may mean sending a desk manager to the original room with multiple keys to a set of optional rooms from which the guest could choose based on his or her unique preferences. Although circumstances will influence the response, when possible, delight the guest with an unexpected option such as an upgrade to a suite or a room on the concierge level.

Although situations like these are exceptions, exceptions require exceptional customer service.

At the beginning of this article, I posed the question, “Why is it that businesses consistently claim to value customers, yet inconsistently deliver exceptional customer service?”

Some ask this question as though it’s rhetorical and asked merely for effect with no answer expected.

Well, here’s the answer: The reason that you and I (and your customers) inconsistently receive exceptional customer service is because... it’s voluntary.

An employee chooses to express genuine interest, share unique knowledge, or provide a pleasant surprise. This explains why you and I, as customers, rarely receive exceptional customer service.

So, while employees consistently execute required job functions such as obtaining a valid method of payment, they inconsistently demonstrate voluntary job essence such as offering a sincere and specific compliment. This accounts for why, although they consistently execute job functions, employees inconsistently demonstrate job essence.

So what’s a business to do?

After educating employees about the difference between job function and job essence as well as the seven simple ways they can elevate their personal customer service, managers should look for ways to incorporate job essence into job function.

This can be done by design, such as the waiter’s description of the appetizer or the refreshing hotel wake-up call verbiage proposed above. Or it may be a bit more spontaneous, such as the front desk agent’s compliment of the gentleman’s necktie or Joni’s thoughtful birthday gesture at Caesars Palace.

Only when employees recognize that their jobs consist of both job function and job essence and are intentional about displaying job essence while serving customers, will they have the awareness to consistently elevate the quality of their personal customer service—and make lasting positive impressions on the customers they serve.

Steve Curtin has 20 years of experience between hotel operations, sales and marketing, training and development, and customer service roles working for Marriott International, one of the premiere customer-focused companies in the world. As the Area Director of Training for the New York City market, Mr. Curtin organized the training efforts at more than a dozen area hotels to successfully coordinate corporate-wide training initiatives. While at the NY Marriott Marquis, Mr. Curtin worked with a team of executives to implement training that resulted in dramatic increases in employee and customer satisfaction scores. One such initiative titled The Basics was adapted from the Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards in 1998 and branded by Marriott headquarters to become a company-wide initiative involving more than 3,000 hotels. Mr. Curtin can be contacted at 303-325-1375 or steve@stevecurtin.com Extended Bio...

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