Why are employees not on the same page?
Off Premises Growth Academy senior partner Erie Dardick wrote something in the Catering Specialist that caught my eye. Whilst eating burritos in a certain grocery store, he looked up their website which listed catering as one of the services the chain provided. Selecting the particular store he was at, he received a “sorry…” message. The response he got when he selected another branch was identical. Giving up, he then asked the person at the counter who made his burrito "Excuse me, I have an event coming up and was wondering who I should speak to about getting it catered." The employee responded "Oh, I don't think we do catering…"
Confused by what he was told and yet, determined to find out what exactly was happening, especially when the store’s website said they did catering, he decided to investigate further. Walking up to the nearest customer service desk, he posed the same question “Hi. I’m hoping to get an event catered, how would I go about doing that?” The guy manning the desk replied “I’m not sure; I think we only cater on holidays.”
This simply made no sense. Here was someone at the customer service desk, who, when asked about their catering program, admitting that he wasn’t sure and thought (mind you, not knew), that they did it only on holidays. The guy was also unwilling to verify this with someone else. How bad can it be? “A whole lot of bad” says Dardick. “How do you mean?” According to him, this was more than a failure in the training and cultural integration of, off - premises revenue channels into day-to-day workflow. It wasn’t just a failure of marketing and not onboarding new business; this was a failure to grab an existing potential sale.
Here he was, ready to spend some money – only to be told by a business that was open for business “sorry we can’t take your business”. Let’s pause a moment to let that sink in.
This reminds me of an incident that occurred several years ago. I reserved a room at a hotel for one night on my drive with my family (wife and son) to a faraway holiday destination. The reservationist informed me that they had two room types – standard and superior. When asked the difference, he informed me that the superior room was a slightly larger and was Rs.3000/- more than the standard room rate. I opted for a standard room and shelled out an additional Rs. 1800/- for an extra bed, which when rolled in, made the room really tight spaced – especially as there was neither a luggage rack nor a wardrobe. Had the reservationist told me (what I later discovered on the hotel’s website), that the superior rooms were much larger, had a sofa -bed and a wardrobe, I would have gladly opted for that category. Sadly, a “win-win” situation went out of the window due to the hotel employee’s failure to ‘upsell’.
Make no mistake; training your employees to be knowledgeable of what services and facilities your business provides is fundamental. The guy who made Eric Dardick’s burrito must at a minimum, be aware that the chain of grocery stores he worked for, catered for events - just as much as a hotel’s reservationist must know everything there is to know about their hotel’s rooms.
Shafeek Wahab - Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Customer Service Trainer and Ex-Hotelier
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