The Experience...Matters.

Does your team have experience delivering an experience?

Sounds a bit redundant but they are as far apart as east is from west when it comes to the meaning and importance of both.

Let's take the word EXPERIENCE and break it down:

Is experience a noun, a verb, a skill, an adjective, is it the same as expertise or knowledge? Is experience a trait, a quality or a strength?

For this article the meaning of experience strangely enough is none of the above. What I want to focus on is good old fashioned "Customer Service"....let's define that.

Customer service is ANY interaction between an employee and customers. In the so called service culture we are now ingrained into in the 21st century that definition can many times fall flat on its face for how frequently we say it, but rarely do we deliver it with authenticity and urgency. One example is the hideous voice mail culture we have spawned over the last 15 or so years. "Thank you for calling "XYZ"...your call is VERY important to us but due to high caller volume your call may be delayed until your next birthday, so please hold and we will be right with you as soon as we can hire someone to actually take your call who knows what they are doing because you have nothing better to do than sit on hold for 3 hours..."

Poor customer service interactions are critically damaging to a brand and it is more than costly too...it can kill your business. As such, hospitality firms have now established customer service principals such as "the customer is always right...". Be careful who you hire in this time of restaffing your front of the house teams...do they have the soft skills or the emotional intelligence to communicate what good customer service really is?

Training, culture, standards, accountability and follow through are more important now than ever as social media norms are now driving the marketing messages as well as the feed back interactions from customers who can make or break you with poor comments on these frequently reviewed platforms. Do you use them? I do.

Feedback is critical and should not be feared if it is negative because that is the only way to identify weak areas in need of improvement. Maybe it is an awareness issue that a simple training adjustment that can resolve it quickly to make the problem go away...sometimes negative feedback isn't always bad when you look into how to address it properly. That is call continuous improvement...the status quo or ignoring negative comments will make a firm rigid and inflexible thinking they are always right....well, that is just stupid.

The customer journey is an important one and is fundamental to building a solid brand with brand loyalty...they engage for a reason and yes, it is the experience. That is because you are doing things right and fixing things that go wrong with humility and a sense of urgency.

Your brand culture attributes are the ways that your customers interact and participate in your service. These are all intentional strategies you set into motion when you understand who your customer is and what it is they are looking for.

So if you think experience, narrowly or broadly defined, is a key component of who, what, where and how you are perceived in business and where you are going?

Your are 100% correct and I hope you enjoyed this brief experience...

Joseph Rogan, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Rita's Hospitality Group writes frequently on topics relevant to the hospitality industry. Send comments to: [email protected] or visit our website at: www.ritascatering.com