Business Through Empathy

Earlier this year, we had written a newsletter post about Empathy in Service (Empathy in Service: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/empathy-service-yomorebi-hospitality-consulting-xl9zc/?trackingId=3k8yDrYyToOV6rnVJ3VtbQ%3D%3D), and we now find ourselves circling back to that topic.

In understanding the hospitality industry, we find that there are several things a customer pays for starting with the room, food & beverage, spa services, transport facilities, room service, laundry services, and the list goes on.

While it may seem logical to charge a customer for these services, we must understand the underlying factor: Service.

Recently, our sunny state Goa has been in the news for the wrong reasons and while we may sit around debating numbers of tourist arrivals through the years or compare Goa with other international destinations, the crux of the matter lies in making Goa a more welcoming and hospitable state through its service quality.

Goa has been a preferred destination owing to its geographical strengths, but service quality has always been the cornerstone of that success.

Recently, we had a situation while travelling on a domestic airline with elderly parents who were seated towards the back of the plane. Although the announcement on the fourth transit bus that we were on announced to enter from the back, the airplane only opened the front door thereby requiring our parents to walk towards the end where our seats were.

Just before we reached our seats, the plane opened up the back door allowing passengers to enter leading to a human traffic jam in a very narrow congested aisle.

On informing the airhostess, she did nothing. Between the other passengers and us, we sorted our the movement while the staff remained motionless. ?

Although it is easy to find the right thing to do in hindsight, bringing up situations such as these in empathy-in-service training can help staff understand each guest differently and tweak the manner in which they respond to the situation.

Empathy in service is knowing that you cannot treat all customers the same. Each customer has a different set of needs and comes with their own baggage of past experiences, both good and bad.

By training our staff repeatedly using real-life scenarios, we can create an atmosphere of immense empathy that helps staff realize what a guest really needs. This contributes to the overall perception of Tourism in a state, or even a country.

So, how can we train our staff to be more empathetic? How do you get your team to treat each customer as a unique individual instead of blanketing them all as the same? How can staff recognize situations where they may put themselves in the guests’ shoes to deliver better service?