Mahatma Gandhi, the famous Indian leader, expressed his view of how important customers are, very aptly: “A customer is the most important visitor on the premises. They are not dependent on us, we are dependent on them. They are not an interruption of our world, they are the purpose of it. They are not an outsider to our business, they are part of it. We are not doing them a favour by serving them, they are doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so”. So why is it the general culture in our hospitality industry to abandon our guests, rather than offering service excellence? Is it ignorance or is it our culture? Generally, the majority of operators focus all their energy and attention on finding the perfect site; raising the significant finance to create their vision, employing the services of leading designers and architects, creating a stunning venue with amazing furniture and an incredible sound system, hosting some of the hottest DJs in town and then, at the very last stage prior to opening, employing staff by availability rather than by ability, and offering little or no training. This happens time and time again. Why after investing such considerable finance would you choose not to invest in training your staff to offer service excellence to your guests? Ultimately, it is your guests that will assist you in making your venture financially rewarding. It is, therefore, good business to train your staff. One old argument constantly reiterated is that as we are in the industry of transient staff, why waste money on training them? Who makes it a transient employment market? Perhaps ourselves, by choosing not to invest in people. I am sure we have all heard many people say “ What if I train them and they leave?”. Well, we would suggest “What if you don’t and they stay”. We constantly hear the industry talking about market saturation and the fact that over the last ten years, there has been an explosion in the number of new licences issued. We hear them commenting on the fact that it is so competitive out there and that discounting strategies and employing the best DJs are amongst the only routes to success. Yet the majority do not seem to see that service excellence could be their unique selling point, and that maybe we do actually need more bars, but ones that are offering service excellence. What is service excellence? Without going into the physical cycle of service, excellence is about doing ordinary things extraordinarily well, it is about going beyond what is expected. It is about adding value and integrity to every interaction. It is about being at your best with every customer. It is about discovering new ways to delight those we serve. It is about taking care of the guest like you would take care of your grandmother. By offering service excellence, we expose ourselves to the opportunity of being rewarded with very handsome gratuities. Many sceptics would say that we have no tipping culture in the UK. Well, we have news for you, we have. By offering service excellence, you will receive gratuities and good ones, time and time again. Picture this. It is a Saturday night, the bar is very busy. The bartender has just made two fantastic cocktails, the guest has just paid for them and left no gratuity and the bartender is not happy. Why? Probably because he forgot to smile, he forgot to acknowledge them when he was serving another guest, he forgot to welcome them to the bar, he forgot to embark on some dialogue with his guests, he made the drinks, but he took ten minutes to do so, he got chatting to his colleagues, holding back his guests from enjoying themselves, and finally the icing on the cake, he forgot to thank them. Making great drinks is not enough. Your guests are there to be wowed. It may sound a simple process to look after a guest, but how many times have you experienced exactly that kind of service? We would suggest many times, and that is the failure to deliver just basic courteous service, not excellence. Conversely, how many times have you been wowed? Perhaps your server did something extraordinary to enhance your experience; perhaps they did something to take your experience beyond your expectation or perhaps they just simply delighted you. Unfortunately, not often enough. We are constantly being told of how many guests hear about one bad experience in a bar. Consider the chain reaction of discussion between friends, colleagues and associates about that bad experience. If you only give one bad experience each day, then consider how that multiplies up over a year. That is not good publicity, not good practice and certainly not good business. So, can you afford not to invest in training your employees on how to deliver service excellence? Thankfully, we are gradually seeing more and more operators sharing this viewpoint, and investing in their people and ultimately their guests. We are seeing a new wave of companies offering training and consultancy services to the hospitality industry. Jointly they share this vision, that in order to guarantee success in business, investment has to be made in training service excellence. One day, service excellence may be universal rather than just a vision. Perhaps, one day, we will all realise, we are in a very privileged position to be given the opportunity by our guests, to serve them. We certainly hope so. Peter Dundas and Ronnie Gamble of Luscious Liquid see service standards slipping Excellence not Abandonment Luscious Liquid offer a wide range of training and consultancy services to the hospitality industry and they believe passionately in encouraging and assisting this industry to offer service excellence to their guests consistently. Luscious Liquid tel: 0141-552-8778 email:[email protected] industry comment 80)