Is your team really giving 5-star service?
So many businesses claim to be giving 5-Star service, yet their customers don’t always feel that’s what they’ve received. In this episode I relate the story of a 5-Star hotel who recognized that their people have never been on the receiving end of real 5-Star service, so how could they be expected to know what it feels like.
Listen to this new, 9-minute episode to hear how that played out and some other ideas for how you and your team can ramp up your service, regardless of the price point.
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– Is your team really giving five star service? Listen to this episode and find out. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the “Wedding Business Solutions Podcast.” I was thinking about a story the other day that I was told by a five star hotel, and they were training their people on giving five star service. They were giving them classes, bringing in consultants, they were doing everything they could and it just wasn’t quite there. And then the manager realized that the people they were trying to train had never experienced five star service as a customer. They had never stayed in a five star hotel. They had never eaten in a five star restaurant.
So the words didn’t have context because those people, it was words and you tell them, okay, better service, and do this and do this and this is how you serve, right? Serve from the left, take from the right, whatever, you know, the forks line up and everything. But there was no context to it that the people could own what that meant. So they did something very smart where they sent some of their people to stay at a five star hotel. They sent them to eat at five star restaurants. They paid for that experience. They were paying for consultants, why not pay for actual life experience? And the people came back when they had experienced it with a whole new perspective and they’re like, “Oh I get it now. This is different.” And if you’ve ever had the privilege of staying at a real five star hotel, because I’ve been at some that called themselves five star that weren’t quite, and this is perspective. If your benchmark is a nice hotel, maybe a Hilton or a Marriott, you might have had good service. But then if you go to a Waldorf Astoria or a Ritz Carlton or a Four Seasons or, you know, Rosewood or one of these properties, it’s different.
And how do you explain what’s different? Because if you have nice people at the front desk who are friendly and helpful, well, you can have that at a Holiday Inn. It doesn’t have to be at a Ritz Carlton for that. But what is actually different about it? And it’s really hard to explain that to people. So if you have people and you’re trying to provide top level service, understand your customers and where they’re coming from, where do they eat, where do they shop? Where do they go on vacation and what is their benchmark? It’s also an important thing if you’re talking to clients about the experience that they want to have for their guests, what do their guests expect? So if you’re thinking of having, you know, regular bar and not top shelf, if you invited your guests to your home would you be serving these regular level drinks or would you be serving higher level spirits? Right? What do they expect to have? ‘Cause it’s not just about you, it’s about your guests as well.
So when it comes to the service, when it comes to the things that you’re selling and when it comes to the service that you’re providing, does your team know how to provide that top level of service? Have they ever experienced it themselves? And maybe it would be a good investment if you were to take them to actually do it. I had the privilege, I stayed at a Ritz Carlton earlier this year, and it’s different. It’s hard to explain what was different about it, but it’s different. They also fell down on a couple of things that I thought they would’ve done better. I had the opportunity to speak to the manager about it and he agreed there were some things that weren’t right. I’m the kind of person that would talk to the manager instead of going and posting the bad review online. I know we wish everybody would do that, but not everybody does. I just want to do what I would hope would be done for me. But this whole idea of five star service and what your customers expect and what your employees or partners have experienced themselves, the words are hollow without the feeling, the feeling of what that means to be delivering that level of service. But also explaining to your customers, what is it that they expect? What is it that their guests expect? You want them to walk away with a feeling that this was an amazing event.
What does that mean? Well, what’s their benchmark? If you were invited to a wedding as a guest at a place you’ve never been, maybe it’s out of state, place you’ve never been, what’s your expectation? Your expectation is, air quotes here, wedding food. I don’t know what that is. I don’t think they teach that at the Culinary Institute of America. I don’t think there’s like wedding food 101 and wedding food 102. I don’t think there’s such a thing. But we have a low, you know, expectation not to be bad but just that it’s going to be okay, right? It’s going to be this mass produced kind of food and maybe it’s tasty and there you go. And when you’re given better, you’re like, oh wow. Right? Or service, the same thing.
Service is a feeling as much it is the service itself. You know, of waiters and waitresses that are anticipating what you need instead of you having to ask. Or remembering the drink that you ordered, the bartender remembering the drink you ordered before. “Oh, would you like another gin Martini? Would you like another cosmopolitan?” That is a level of service that you don’t have to be in an expensive place for. It’s a matter of the people understanding that they’re providing a different level of service. But this story about the five star service, about the people that the words just didn’t have meaning until they actually experienced it themselves. That’s important. I remember a story about when Lexus cars first came to the country, Toyota came out with the Lexus brand, the high level, and they did look at BMW and Mercedes to see what their showrooms were like. But they went to Ritz Carlton and looked at what the experience was like at the hotel, the concierge experience. And they wanted to create something like that because that was the clientele they were going after. And that was what they would expect. And if they would get that level of service there at the car dealership, they would come back because it’s what they expect if they go to a restaurant, if they go to a hotel or go to a business, expect that level of service. So you need to know the target you’re trying to hit.
You need to know your clientele. And if you or your people that you work with have never experienced that yourselves, can you really deliver what the customer expects, because it’s this intangible thing. It’s not the tangible parts of it, right? You can buy all the best materials and put together the most beautiful designs or photos or whatever, invitations, anything, right? But a lot of what we do is really intangible. And then intangible is that feeling, that service feeling, right from the initial inquiry all the way through when you do their event and then beyond. That’s part of that as well. So I remember somebody saying to me one time, “Alan, you’re probably our most expensive speaker, but you’re also the easiest to do business with.” And I said, “Well, if I was the most expensive and the hardest to do business with, we wouldn’t be talking now because that friction would make you go to someone else.” Because when we make it easy to do business with us, people want to do business with us even when we’re more pricey because that’s part of the value we bring. Part of the value is that service that we bring.
So benchmark, right? If your people have never experienced that kind of service, it might be wise to invest so they understand what that means. Words are good, right? And I train on this and I can help people understand this to a certain point, but there’s nothing like actually experiencing it yourself where you can feel the difference and be like, oh, that was different. I remember going to a Capital Grille restaurant, and I go in and I’m wearing a dark suit and there was a white napkin on the table and as I’m sitting down the waiter was changing the napkin out for a dark napkin. Never seen that before. Didn’t expect it, wouldn’t have even thought to ask if they had a dark napkin. But he saw I was wearing dark. I’ve had the opposite happen where it was a dark napkin and somebody was wearing white pants and I said, “Oh, do you have a white napkin?” They said, “Oh no, sorry, we don’t,” at a different restaurant. Capital Grille set the bar. They set the bar up. Oh, this is a fancy place. Why wouldn’t you have a white napkin for someone who was wearing white slacks?
So it’s that thing, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. Once you’ve experienced it, you can’t un-experience it. So if you’re trying to provide a high level of service that your people actually know what that feels like, not just the words. So I hope this gives you something to think about, and hope you’re get your team to work on it. Let me know if you need some help. Thanks.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora:
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