Empower Them
Dental floss. That’s all I wanted. Simple request, right? RIGHT?!
I recently stayed at a “high-end” resort, and was reminded of how important empowerment is. Your customers can gauge the caliber of your service culture by the responsiveness of the first person they bring their issue to. If I ask you for something, and you have to get permission from someone else that tells me that you are not empowered.
Lack of empowerment = Lack of trust.
I’ll write it again for added emphasis. Lack of empowerment = Lack of trust. And when there is no trust, there is no discretionary effort. Discretionary effort is that secret sauce that the best service cultures have. Basically, it is doing more than is required of you. You go the extra mile…because you want to. Not because you have to.
And it’s a beautiful thing when it happens. A team brimming with discretionary effort is not possible without trust.
Now let’s get back to our “high-end” hotel. As a frequent traveler, my luggage is always semi-packed. In my toiletry bag, dental floss is one of my constant companions. However, on this trip, I forgot it at home! Not to worry, I figured that the hotel’s gift shop would have it. When I got to the hotel, the gift shop attendant told me they were out of dental floss. However, she said that the front desk “should” have it. Nice.
Now, if she was empowered, she could have simply called the front desk to check. But that didn’t happen. So I went to the front desk, and the agent said “yes,” the hotel has it. He assured me that he would ask housekeeping to send it to my room, and I would have the floss within 15 minutes. OK.
35 minutes went by. No floss. So I called the operator and inquired about the status of the delivery. The operator assured me that it would only be another seven minutes or so.
25 minutes later; still no floss. So I called again.
This kept happening for close to two hours. I then called and asked for a manager. He came on the line and told me that the hotel doesn’t even have dental floss, and he doesn’t know why “they” (his staff) told me they have it. No apology by the way.
He then told me that I needed to go to the Guest Services desk in the lobby and they can coordinate having some delivered to the hotel for me. (Why couldn’t the manager do that?) Ordinarily, I would simply use Door dash or something similar, but that wasn’t available where I was. I went to the guest service desk, and the agent assisted with my request for the floss and had it delivered.
Hallelujah! Several hours after my initial request, I got the floss.
It would be easy to blame the staff, but that misses the mark. That ordeal was NOT a person-issue; it was a trust-issue. Specifically, it was CLEAR to me that the hotel’s leadership simply doesn't trust their staff to make decisions and “take care” of the guest. And when people work in an environment with no trust, morale suffers. Which leads to every other worthwhile metric suffering: guest engagement, revenue and profitability.
Sure, SEO optimized ads and clever marketing can draw customers in the first time. But will they return? Will they recommend it to others?
For me, the answer to both of these questions is no and no…for this hotel.
If you truly value your team, then trust them enough to empower them. Have an empowerment toolkit. Share best practices of when team members empowered themselves. Then celebrate those examples regularly.
Takeaway: Make it easy for your team to get dental floss for customers. AKA EMPOWER THEM.
Bryan K. Williams, DM Keynote Speaker & AuthorDrBWilliams.com
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