Does your brand's tagline serve a purpose?
A hotel or restaurant’s guest service quality is determined by how well it actually treats guest, not by how well it tells them they’ll be treated.
What exactly is the purpose of your company’s tagline? Consider Audi’s “Truth in Engineering” tagline - how does it capture the essence of truth after it was revealed that the car manufacturer, along with its parent company, Volkswagen, had cheated on emissions tests for nearly half a million diesel cars? Conjuring up a sensational tagline that stands out is not a problem for many hotels - but often these slogans have little credibility among guests or staff. They are simply a set of meaningless words that were created by an advertising firm; offering more than what staff is prepared to deliver and less than what guests expect to receive.
Many hotels and restaurants in the hospitality industry create slogans and taglines such as ‘best’, ‘quality,’ ‘innovative, ‘superior customer service’ and ‘a leader in…’which are vague, boring and truth be told, no longer command attention no matter what else the slogan states.
So, how does one remain true to ones stated slogan? A good example of this is CVS Health, which is the largest pharmacy health care provider in the U.S. Its slogan is “Health is everything”. In September 2014, the company stopped selling cigarettes and tobacco products at its over 7,000 retail pharmacies countrywide. Despite, that decision, which cost them loss of several hundred millions of dollars in annual sales, CVS Health decided to stay true to its company’s purpose, and it’s the inspiration behind everything it does. It chose to be faithful to its prime concern: “Health is everything”.
Several hospitality-related operators have brand standards to establish customer service levels standards help ensure that every part of your service reflects the best way your company knows to perform it. These could be in the form of written Standards of Operations (SOP’s). More than ninety percent of these businesses craft their SOP’s to tell their staff the ‘What’ to do (posses Job knowledge) and the ‘How’ to do it (required job skill). What they fail to include is the ‘Why’ they are doing it, namely…the purpose! All of us need a reason to wake up in the morning and therefore use an alarm clock. The alarm clock for employees, who work in places which don’t tell them why their service is of value, is the ‘they pay my salary’ reason. In such a situation, how can one receive exceptional guest service when there is no clearly defined purpose?
Imagine then, how bad it must be in several work places that do not have any standards of operation (SOPs)? Looked at in another way; let’s assume Restaurant A pays approximately the same salary as competing Restaurant B does. Restaurant A prescribes exactly how the task should be done, when it should be done, and where it should be done. However, Restaurant B, not only explains the how, when and where – but goes on to advise why it is important to do the task in that particular manner. Salary’s been equal; no prizes for guessing which restaurant’s employees are likely to deliver better service… Restaurant B ofcourse!
Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research estimates, for example, that there are an estimated 5,000 customer/employee touch points every day in a business such as a moderate-sized hotel. Try to visualize the possible outcomes from all these touchpoints involving employees who simply don’t know why they are performing their tasks. This explains why most hospitality operations, at best, provide ordinary customer service. Their employees are given something to work on and willingly or otherwise, obey the binding job function – often producing unsatisfactory results.
Ilzaf Keefahs – writes on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike.
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