Our Danish Action Learning set of 18 hospitality managers have been working hard this winter on the second of six moduels that focus on the art of Service Management. The course is based on our GROW model and has been accredited by the University of Chester.
Value for the customer
The focus of this second module is strategy or how to create value for your customer. Our starting point is the value equation adapted from the ”Service Profit Chain:
Working from this value equation we have spent quite some time exploring two main issues. The first issue is the ”R” – or result – that guests are looking for. Do purchasers of a Black and Decker drill purchase a hand held high speed electric motor devise or are they in the market for a hole. In the same way we must ask the question in the hospitality industry: What are our guests really looking for when we sell the them a room for the night, a management conference package or a wedding banquet?
In the industry jargon we use terms like pax and covers to refer to our guest – etiquettes that would be more appropriate where we describing a flock of sheep all heading for the watering hole.
Loyalty is the key – creating a memorable experience
If the aim is repeat businesses – loyalty – we need to understand what guest are really looking for. What does value mean to them – that is the first step. The second issue is the ”P” – the processes – that we use to deliver that result to the guest. This is where the experience comes in. If we only think in general service terms we are in response mode. Response mode means that we make sure that guests get what they ask for – and we call it good service. But when we invite people home for diner or even a weekend – we don’t give them good service do we? We try and anticipate their needs, we think through who they are and what they might enjoy, and we look to see how we can create an experience for them. And that experience will nearly always have a huge emotional component – we make a connection – and that connection is what creates the memorable experience.
Guest speaker Søren Würtz from Rambøll Management
As part of the Service Management program we invite guest presenters, this time we had the pleasure of welcoming Søren Würtzt from Rambøll Management: Center for Experience Economy. Søren presented his personal invovative approach to the subject by emphasizing that:
“The service profit chain is a great tool for understanding how to create value from at customer experience perspective. This means not just understanding the client from at psychological perspective but also from the sociological perspective. One way to do this is to think of customers and our selves as belonging to tribes. What are our rituals, what are their rituals and how can we make connections. Sørens main point is that loyalty arises if what we offer is meaningful (valuable) to them in their tribal context”.
So in order to understand what it feels like to part of a tribe – with ritual visual indicators – we decided to create a tribe and perform a raindance.
Sørens point was well made – the rain came pouring down and we had a great after noon. A big thank you to Søren Wurtz from Rambøl.