Guests will often tolerate even otherwise unpleasant experiences if these are made up for by good customer service. Recognizing their complaints, resolving these as well as possible, and generally making them feel like the staff is on their side is a major part of generating positive reviews.

 

This does not, unfortunately, happen overnight or by itself. In-house training can go some way in differentiating your business from comparable ones in terms of service quality, but a formal course can benefit people at every level and in every department of the organization.

What Is Customer Service, Anyway?

We all have a kind of intuitive, but often insufficient, idea of what good customer service comprises. We know that interactions with employees that leave us feeling good make us see the business they work for in a positive light, but isn’t there a lot more to customer service?

As it happens, this concept has been extensively studied over the years. The main facets of good customer service can be defined as:

• Enhancing the overall guest experience.
• Knowledgeable, enthusiastic, solution-orientated employees.
• Friendliness and good personal representation.
• Rapid resolution of problems and appropriate staffing levels.
• Constant improvement based on customer feedback.
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• Naturally, each of these elements can be broken down into multiple sub-domains, practices, and techniques relevant to the hospitality industry.

• What This Course Will Teach You:

• This short course is aimed at novices in the hospitality industry but may well serve as a refresher for experienced customer-facing staff and managers alike. After working through the material and practicing the relevant skills in hands-on scenarios, you will:
• Recognize the critical effect of customer service on business outcomes.
• Identify and prioritize guests’ real needs.
• Be able to find ways to provide high-quality, efficient service in various roles.
• Recognize pitfalls to avoid.
• Build better rapport with customers.
• Practice effective conflict and complaint resolution techniques.
• Train others in customer service principles.
• Apply these principles to internal customers (i.e. other departments and stakeholders).

 

No matter how skilled they are in their particular niches, employees in the hospitality industry won’t advance or last long if they lack customer service skills. Developing these is the responsibility of both the individual and their managers.