The most dangerous phrase in the language is “We’ve always done it this way!”
During my walk-about when visiting a restaurant or a hotel to assess which areas I could help them improve, I observe the service behaviours displayed by the team, listen to how they interact with the customers, how the manager interact with their team, look at their systems, their procedures and so on, and I take notes.
When I sit down with the manager or the team leader for the debrief, I ask them questions; ‘why are the commis waiters – of busboys as they are called in the USA - stacking the trays of dirty crockery onto the condiment counter, in full view of the customers?’ for instance. Often, the answer to questions like that is “I’m not sure, we’ve always done it this way.”
There are countless of actions and tasks that we carry out, day in, day out, poor service behaviours, which give negative signals to our customers. And because we perform these tasks automatically, as second nature, without thinking, we are not aware that they are bad habits and that they send a message to our customers that perhaps we don’t enjoy our job, we wished we were somewhere else, we don’t care.
"If you place the emphasis on getting the little things right, and address the everyday problems that come up, you can encourage a culture of attention to detail."
- Sir Richard Branson, British entrepreneur and founder of the Virgin Group.
Attention to details is essential if we want to offer an excellent customer service, and it must cover the
whole customer experience. Every touchpoint in the business must be a positive experience; from a clean and tidy front court and entrance, a heartfelt and professional welcome, to a warm genuine goodbye and thanks when customers leave the premises. There is no point providing a great meal, only to spoilt it with an overall negative experience.
Remember that the customer experience and customer service is all about perception; if the customer feels they had a poor experience, a poor service, then you provided a poor experience or service. So, when I hear ‘we’ve always done it this way’, the first things I ask the manager or the team member is ‘Why? ‘, then ‘do you know how it feels to experience customer service like this?’ It is essential that the whole team put themselves in the customer’s shoes and think about how they might feel when they are not genuinely greeted, when their order was wrong twice in a row, or they spent the whole meal staring at a pile of dirty crockery opposite their table.
Working by number or simply going through the motions is not providing the best customer experience we can and should. It is easy to think we are doing well enough because we don’t get many customer complaints, and that if people complain it is often because they are ‘moaners’ and will never be satisfied. We need to constantly reassess what we do and ask ourselves whether the service we provide reach the high standards that we are, or once were striving to achieve.
Complacency is the death of excellent customer service.
It is essential that team leaders and managers do a walk-about once in a while, with ‘fresh eyes’, as a customer, experiencing the whole customer journey, from entering the building, to leaving the premises and every touchpoint in between. But doing so with a critical eye, observing and assessing the team, listening to their interactions with the customers and thoroughly looking at the service behaviours they are displaying, and ask themselves, ‘why are we doing this that way?’, ‘Are there better ways of clearing dirty crockery so that it is out of the way?’ and so on.
Following this, the team leader needs to review some of the systems and procedures in place which needs improving. At the next team meeting or with a specific team member during a one-to-one performance review, it is crucial they share their findings, provide corrective feedback and refresher training accordingly.
“Companies need to prove their worth — day after day, month after month, year after year.” – Kaiser Mulla-Feroze, former Chief Marketing Officer at Benchling Inc.
Providing a great positive customer experience is a job that is never done. It is an on-going endeavour, which should become second nature, as how customers feel about our service will determine whether they come back or not. So, please ban “we’ve always done it this way” from your vocabulary; it is dangerous as it keeps you complacent, and prevents you from looking at ways to improve your systems and procedures, ultimately providing an ever-greater customer experience.
