Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” By understanding why your customers/guests are unhappy, you can turn things around, improve, and increase guest satisfaction.
Staff response time is often a big part of that turnaround—here’s why:
The 3-Minute Rule in Guest Services
In the hospitality industry, the3-minute rule or “3-minute check” states that you should return to a customer’s table after a few minutes to check that everything is okay.
We’ve all been in a restaurant where the server brings the food, checks everything is okay, leaves, and then returns minutes later to confirm. Some customers might complain under their breath to fellow diners, but the truth is that they would complain more if the server wasn’t attentive.
If the customer wants a condiment, drink, or information about the food, the 3-minute check will give them what they need before their food gets cold. Without it, their frustration will grow.
Even if they don’t want anything, it shows attentiveness and lets the customer know that the server is there for them.
The 3-minute rule applies to other aspect of guest services, as well.
In the context of a presentation/pitch, the 3-minute rule is the notion that you should get your point across clearly and concisely within a few minutes, as that’s all it takes for someone to make a first impression.
The same is true for your business. Your customers will quickly form an opinion about your business. If you ignore them or feed them endless, unhelpful information, their opinion will be negative. If you are helpful as soon as they walk through the door, provide information quickly and clearly, and remain on hand to help, their opinion is more likely to be positive.
Impact of Staff Availability on Reviews
Staff availability is a big part of the customer experience. We checked several New York City hotels on Trip Advisor and found that between 10 and 20% of negative reviews (1 and 2 stars) mentioned the staff in a negative light. Most of these complained about availability, arguing that employees weren’t around when guests needed them.
Availability directly impacts guest reviews, but it also has an indirect impact.
If you don’t have enough staff to clean rooms, welcome/assist guests, serve food, and provide other basic services, everything suffers and guests leave unhappy.
An understaffed business is detrimental in every industry, but it has more of an impact in hospitality. Complaints about dirty rooms and towels can be remedied by competent cleaning staff; rudeness often stems from overworked employees; food issues could be caused by busy kitchens and burdened staff.
Peak Hours vs. Staff Coverage
It’s not uncommon for response times and guest satisfaction to dip during peak times. Your employees have too many responsibilities, and they can’t get to every customer or fulfill every duty.
But it doesn’t need to be like that. You can hire temporary staff to meet demand during those peak times. Not only will it take some of the burden off the shoulders of full-time employees, but the level of service increases, guests are happier, and you provide a more positive experience.
Peak seasons are when your business should thrive. This is when you should be at your best. So, rather than taking a hit and letting employee stress levels rise and guest dissatisfaction spiral, hire some on-demand workers and fill the gaps.
Training Temp Staff in Quick Response
Once you hire on-demand workers to fill certain roles, you need to train them to ensure they respond quickly and professionally:
- Get to the Point: The 3-minute rule comes into play again here. Train your staff in the “whats” and the “hows”. Present a problem and teach them how to solve it. Don’t get lost in the “whys”. They don’t need to know the ethos behind every decision. The customer won’t care why an employee cleans their room in a certain way or offers a specific service, only that they do a good job.
- Keep it Simple: There’s nothing wrong with repetitive tasks. The more an employee does it, the better they will become. So, teach specific employees how to do certain tasks and let them manage the tasks going forward. Whatever it is, they’ll be an expert before long.
- Practical and Not Theoretical: Don’t just tell them how to do something—show them. Let them learn by watching and then doing.
- Pair Up: If you have experienced staff members, assign them new employees. Turn your most skilled workers into mentors. They can show your new staff the ropes while providing emotional support and giving them some accountability.
- Check-in With Them: You don’t need to micromanage your employees. Nothing turns a worker away quicker than constantly having someone hovering over their shoulder criticizing everything they do. Instead, check in with them regularly, ask your other employees how they’re doing, check guest reviews to see if there are any complaints, and if an employee falls below your standards, give them some constructive criticism.
Measuring and Improving Response Times
How quickly can your staff members respond to a guest’s needs? The faster they are, the fewer disruptions there will be.
Measure metrics such as response time, and if it falls short, implement some processes to speed it up:
- Train your staff, focusing on specific areas designed to increase response times.
- Use automated messaging and chatbots so your customers and prospective customers always have someone to talk to.
- Use AI tools to automate menial tasks, including reservations, scheduling, and personalized guest experiences.
- Try to anticipate a guest’s needs. AI tools can help to crunch the data, but you can also ask previous guests about their issues and areas that need improvement.
- Automate check-in and check-out communication to reduce friction.
- Provide your guests with all of the information they need to contact staff members, order drinks/food, find local attractions, and understand their bill.
Creating Service Recovery Protocols
Bad reviews happen. It doesn’t matter how responsive and helpful you are; they will come. Sometimes, guests complain about pricing or blame a bad experience with the weather or local attractions on the hotel. Other times, staff were just having an off-day and couldn’t appease the guest.
Either way, you can turn those negative experiences around.
Service recovery protocols are a series of procedures that kick into action following a bad review or a customer complaint. They can include:
- Allowing experienced employees to deal with complaints and negative reviews directly.
- Take responsibility. Nothing angers an aggrieved guest more than a business that refuses to apologize or take ownership.
- Be empathetic with the customer. Make it clear that you care and will try to resolve the issue.
- Find a workable solution that appeases the guest, whether that means offering a refund, a coupon, or changing your practices.
- Direct guests through a dedicated complaints management system designed to resolve their issues.
The final step is to follow through with the guest and make sure their issue was resolved and they are happy with the level of service provided.
