How Great Service Comes From Great Leadership

The UK hospitality industry will start to take large numbers of staff off furlough this week, as it prepares for the full reopening of the hospitality industry on 17th May 2021. Getting physical environments, social distancing and safety measures in place is still paramount. And so is improving the levels of customer service. Exceptional and reassuring customer service will be critical for business success, but it will require a different set of interactions, leadership capabilities and deeper emotional connections with both our customers and colleagues that will continue long after lockdown fully ends.

To welcome back your loyal customer base and your colleagues, you must deliver an experience that can connect on a much deeper emotional and empathetic level than pre-pandemic. Customers and colleagues will understandably need reassurance. For your regular guests and customers who are returning, the way previous stays in hotels, ordering in bars and general interactions they had previously will change. There will be things operationally that you don’t do anymore and new agile options that you’ve introduced. All of this needs explaining with compassion, empathy, clarity, consistency, reassurance and patience. This will require exceptional customer service from each and every single person, each and every time.

It only takes one poor interaction from one person to tarnish the customer experience and begin to erode your loyal customer and returning customers. But as the industry re-opens, how we retain those loyal customers as well as attracting potential new customer bases will require a ‘right first time’ approach. The ‘sorry we don’t do that any more because of COVID’ won’t be enough of an explanation. Staff members will will be required to give expanded explanations as to the new changes made to enable both reassurance, repeat bookings, returning guests and revenue. How new working practices actually work, the benefits it delivers and the solutions for safety and new engaging experiences will be key. Companies now have a unique opportunity for change. However, If done without consistent and agile new customer service learning and development, relying on previous training with a ‘one size fits all COVID customer service catch up’ could very easily fracture the emotional connection, hard-earned trust and decades of investment in your business and brand. Trust and engagement could simply evaporate in an instant with customers and businesses lost permanently. L&D professionals have never been under more pressure to deliver development as pace and scale that is agile, fit for future and not just fit for function.

Every individual staff member will need to be empowered, trained and trusted in a systematic way and in good time, to deliver safe and engaging customer experiences that allow for practice and trial before roll-out. Typically development focuses on ‘doing’ — how to get tasks done. Although still critical to enable staff to understand new working methods and new or amended SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures), an often overlooked capability must be developed and that’s ‘thinking’. How our colleagues think will affect how they feel, which in turn drives their actions and ultimately the results delivered. Businesses must invest in thinking skills for the future. Cross functional integration will also be key, because without it teams simply won’t be able to deliver. Companies (either in whole or in part) still fixated with process over outcomes, siloed functions, command and control hierarchies and insular ‘one size fits all’ development do so at their own peril.

Just like customers, colleagues have emotional requirements to be satisfied for them to perform effectively against the backdrop of trying to balance the myriad of competing priorities. Teams need leaders that enable and inspire them to fully understand what success looks and feels like whilst being able to have equal stature discussions, act on their feedback and execute improvement ideas their teams provide to them. Transparency will be critical, with management information and shared data distributed and discussed, to allow staff to both understand and adapt in the near and medium term. Leaders must address and develop their personal styles and approaches empowering their teams to enable rapid results, craft self-solve solutions and engage on a cross functional basis by examining key human behaviours, identifying the personal and organisational objectives that empower change, give continual reassurance and transform consumer perceptions.

Find out more about our rapid response talent solutions through Lightbulb’s #FeedbackFirst programme — the only leadership development programme that produces leaders who are world class at giving feedback and acting upon it to improve the future for customers, colleagues and the communities that they serve.

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