How great would it be for your hospitality enterprise to be organisationally self-aware, engaged and have the abilities to self manage the core causes for customer upsets?
In my workshop, Hospitality Excellence that I created for my work on the subject of Hospitality Intelligence, I talk about the three main causes for all customer upsets. When it comes to customer upsets, I need you all to please keep something in mind, the three following categories are where everything funnels down to. Something may go wrong on the surface of the business but then eventually will funnel down to these three core areas.
The three root causes for all customer upsets
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Unfulfilled expectation – Not anticipating or managing the customer expectations. Not being customer focused.
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Unexpected change – Changing the customer's intended outcome or experience. Negatively affecting the future they were living into.
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Lack of acknowledgment – The customer not feeling valued or appreciated. Taking the customer for granted.
So, all the incidences, problems, situations and circumstances that occur with your customers come down to these three areas. I think it will also be helpful, to give you some background around the customer's disposition when it comes to upsets.
Seventy-five percent of the time, 85% of the people are radiating at a negative level. This includes me, you and your customers. Unless your customers are Tibetan monks, they definitely fall into this category. If you have a negative reaction to what I've just stated, that would be my point. Not to worry! This is just a part of the human condition built into all of us as a survival instinct to protect us on some level from something we may not want to experience, or out of some perceived danger and threat.
The jury is in, your customers are negative
People are in a negative disposition either as a victim, they are angry, or they are trying to take responsibility for some kind of circumstance in their life. There is a consensus by the emotional intelligence profession, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, social behavioural economists, as well as the professional coaching industry about the level of negativity in the human condition. I feel this is an important area to share with hospitality industry professionals, so that you can intuitively understand situations and proactively handle them with a higher level of intuition towards their resolve.
I'd like to share with you some hospitality intelligence insights and qualities for helping your organization if/when these customer upsets occur. I do have to preface this with the importance around skill set development, which is hugely critical to this process.
I think it's important for everyone to first understand that when an upset occurs, there is a high level of negative energy residing within the guest. The negative energy that has been generated will turn into one of three negative energy blocks that keeps the customer upset. It may show itself in the form of a limiting belief that the customer has about themselves or the business on some level. They may also make assumptions about your business's ability to turn the situation around, and here again it could be directed internally towards themselves as well. They could also start making some interpretations about the situation that brings about negative opinions, judgments and emotions towards the business.
I want to reiterate that it's vitally important to make the customer feel good about themselves first from their experience with your business, as opposed to just trying to make them feel good about your business. This is a very important take away, and one that can transform your problem-solving capabilities when it comes to proactively managing the root causes for customer upsets as well as the best way to handle the customer situation.
You don't want to be negatively overdrawn
Now at this point the customer feels bad about themselves from the upset, so the experiential value bank is negatively overdrawn at this point. That's why it's so important to design your business around making the customer feel good about themselves before you try to make them feel good about the company. Trying to please the customer instead of trying to make them feel good about themselves will only allow the situation to continue down a negative path. You will get frustrated, and they will get more annoyed, because you're not releasing the negative energy from the upset.
One of the best ways to break these energy blocks is to acknowledge and validate what the guest is going through in a very authentic way. Really listen to the situation in an intuitive manner. When you intuitively listen to another person, you get in their world and see the situation more clearly. Not so much from a right and wrong angle, but where was the missed opportunity and where does the opportunities lie for moving the situation forward.
Also being empathetic is another key ingredient to instill in your organization's culture. Being empathetic allows for the acknowledgment and validation to be much more sincere in its delivery and highly effective in releasing the customer from the negative situation.
The default setting
Having a high hospitality intelligence in your organization and understanding where the gaps are, can allow for stronger performance in these types of situations. If you approach this situation purely from a business intelligence perspective, or a left brain logical approach, you may never get to the real core causes for these upsets in your business.
In more cases than not, you'll try and solve the problem through a logical transactional approach, by buying your way out of the situation in an attempt to reestablish value and integrity in the relationship, or just try to make the situation go away. This seems to be the default setting by so many businesses when it comes to handling customer upsets. There is no real guarantee that the business is going to be truly forgiven or have a chance at generating loyalty benefits with the guest from this approach.
Having a better understanding of customer upsets and how to release the negative energy around them, can also help manage your hospitality climate change, which I talked about in my previous articles. Utilizing a couple of these qualities will help to turn the situation around, whereby releasing the negative energy in the guest and maybe even build some forgiveness capital on some level.
Bottom line, customers just want to know that you really care about them and the experience they are receiving from your business. Yes, they have high expectations, needs and wants, but they also can be understanding and forgiving when they know your heart is in the right place.
Understanding your hospitality intelligence level and growing the skill sets for elevating your business's HI-index, along with properly implemented and aligning business strategies and best practices can vastly improve how your organisation performs throughout your business as well as seeing the missed opportunity and finding the opportunity towards forwarding the customer upset in a more positive direction.
Brett Patten is approaching 35 years in the hospitality industry where he has spent those years accumulating experience in a variety of leadership positions and business enterprises. Brett has become known as one of the top executive leadership and organizational engagement coaches on the subject hospitality intelligence and customer experience design.
Brett's management and business approach transformed hospitality enterprises with sustainable growth results from his days with the prestigious four and five-star hotel brands, such as the Stouffer's hotels, Pan Pacific Hotels, and Le Meridien hotels, as well as working with five-star club resort enterprises like the Longboat Key, to the launching of a nationally award-winning hospitality brand in 2007.
Brett then turned this business processes into a company called "Five-Star Customer Experience Design." Today, after spending the last 15 years researching, studying and developing customer experience design strategies for the hospitality and tourism industries, he has become an industry pioneer and authority on the subject of Hospitality Intelligence. Brett's company engages with some of the top hotel brands and hospitality groups both nationally and internationally in the industry.
