7 Tips to Improve Service Quality at Your Hotel

A hotel that is truly striving to build a “world-class” service culture will make every effort to develop service standards that emphasize exceptional service for every customer. One of the key factors that separate good service from truly exceptional service is consistency.  Consistency means repeatable. A successful hotel general manager needs to be confident that in any given situation, the hotel staff knows how to respond and act appropriately. Whether it’s in the morning or afternoon or evening, whether it’s a weekend or a weekday, rain or shine, and regardless of whom happens to be working that day.

In an industry where service is king, the value of delivering a great guest experience is familiar territory to hoteliers.  Less known are the new social and professional realities and innovative technologies that can boost hotel efforts to facilitate an unforgettable guest experience, in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

We have highlighted 7 ways to improve service quality at your hotel and ensure you provide exceptional service to your hotel guests each and every time:

1. Treat every guest like a VIP

We can’t all be celebrities, CEO’s, or royalty, but treat every guest like a VIP and we guarantee it will be a memorably positive experience they will want to repeat.  Coach your staff to be attentive, responsive and have a sense of urgency for everyone, regardless of their “status”.  In return, your guests will reward you with their patronage, loyalty and – even better – referrals.  An added bonus: when guests are feeling wonderful and special, secondary factors that may pop-up become much more minor (e.g., a small room, mediocre location, etc.).

2. Make training an everyday priority and not just a one-time event

This can seem like mission impossible in an industry where most staff already works above and beyond reasonable hours.  Coming to the rescue are new technologies that offer high-quality training that doesn’t require a lengthy time-commitment.  An increasing number of hotels are seeing the benefits of blending traditional employee training methods with just-in-time training solutions such as Performance Support Systems (PSS).  Just how do these systems work?

Let’s take for an example that you have just implemented a new Property Management System. To get your front desk agents up to speed you could: have them participate in classroom training seminars, complete lengthy e-learning modules, or – worst case scenario – just toss them in head first and have them call the helpdesk if they can’t figure it out while the guest is standing there waiting. Instead, you can use Performance Support to guide your hotel staff on the live application (in this case, your PMS).

Performance Support is an application that uses visual recognition technologies to “see” the PMS screen just as the user does, and constantly monitors the agent’s activities to provide real-time guidance. It can be designed to display balloon tips that are relevant to the agent’s open and active window. These tips guide the agent on what to say to the guest, what questions to ask, troubleshooting, and can also include alerts for critical fields or wrongly entered information.  More sophisticated systems such as Leo Performance Support, also offer automation.

3. Provide personalized customer service

Consistency does not mean that every guest should get the same service. True service excellence requires personalization and making each customer feel as though there is no one else, at that moment, more important than him or her. Front desk attendants that recognize you or call you by name, that are eager to help, that remember your preferences, and that are able to provide valuable information are a huge asset that make a big difference.

The same performance support technology that you use for just-in-time training can also be used to provide personalized customer service at the highest level. Performance Support works in conjunction with your Property Management System to analyze the guest’s profile.  It makes knowledge and information extremely accessible, by displaying overlaid tooltips on top of the application itself, at the moment of need, so that agents can focus on engaging with guests on a personal level…to create lasting impressions. Learn more here.

4. Create a positive start for new employees

Recent studies show that employee turnover is among the highest in the hospitality industry with the average employee turnover in the US reaching 31 percent and as high as 34 percent in the UK. This constant churn is very disruptive and leads to loss of productivity, low morale and poor customer service – not to mention hurting the bottom line.  To combat this epidemic, leading hotels are rethinking their onboarding approach.

Onboarding surveys by the Center for Creative Leadership reveal that new employees who attended a well structured onboarding program were 69% more likely to remain at a company for up to three years.  While previous new-employee initiation programs were one day affairs, today a strong onboarding strategy extends past the first day/week/month to include an on-going approach that will accompany the employee throughout the employment lifetime and support them to achieve better job performance.

5. Update your technology toolbox

Hospitality may be one of the oldest businesses in the world, but in this day and age it should come as no surprise that hotel efforts can only reach their fullest potential by adding modern technology.  According to reports by Software Advice, hotels are fast adopting hotel management software like property management systems (PMS) to streamline the check-in and check-out process, generate financial reports, manage staff and automate daily tasks – saving time, relieving the hotel staff of the more tedious responsibilities and improving the guest experience.  Taking it one step further, hotels that want to serve their staff and customers even better and get more ROI from their PMS systems are turning to Performance Support technology.

Related: 3 Challenges that Keep Hotel Managers Up at Night

6. Take measure of your customer service performance

Make efforts to determine how quickly you are able to address your guests’ requests and issues. According to one customer service survey, 69% of customers define “good” customer service as having their issue or problem addressed quickly and efficiently. With Performance Support solutions in place, hotel managers can rest assured that their staff has the knowledge they need right at their fingertips. Using in context, process guidance that adapts to the actual conversation, front desk agents that use performance support are able to offer the best solution quickly.

7. Tie your staff’s actions to the hotel’s overall performance

W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, famously laid out 14 points for management – chief among them is the concept of “constancy of purpose.” This means instilling purpose in your employees by showing them that what they do every day in the workplace has a big effect – such as impacting the guest experience and the hotel’s revenues. By tying individual behavior to a larger system, you will give your employees a sense of how important it is that they practice good quality service every day.

For ten easy ways to motivate your hotel staff, download a copy of our infographic: 10 Ways to Help Your Team Perform Better.

We would love to know – Which practices do you embrace to improve service quality at your hotel? Please share your comments below.