Is hospitality different to customer service?
In his book “Setting the table”, Danny Meyer highlights the importance of balancing both service and hospitality, reiterating that “understanding the distinction between service and hospitality has been the foundation of his success”. Let’s discover that distinction.
Hospitality follows many of the same rules as customer service but is classified differently. Why is that? People who are classified in the hospitality realm are deemed to be warm, cordial, genial and friendly according to dictionary.com.
Many will argue that this explanation is a rather generalized blend of expectations that go down a precipitous slope whilst raising several other questions. Questions such as; aren’t people providing customer service not friendly, polite and pleasant? Is there no unsmiling, rude and indifferent people working in the hospitality industry? Only the uninitiated will answer with a ‘no’ to both questions.
So, the answer provided by dictionary.com, to why hospitality is classified differently than customer service, is not as simple as it would seem. It is by no means a static, ‘chalk’ on one hand and ‘cheese’ on the other situation…far from it because in reality, it keeps changing hands frequently - although it shouldn’t!
Someone said that being hospitable is about focusing on the other person, understanding their needs and offering to help them meet those needs. But again, is that a right or privilege exclusive to those employed in the hospitality industry? No sir, not by any yardstick. There are countless customer service stories reminding us of businesses outside of the hospitality industry, that still care about their customers and whose staffs, by going that extra two miles, have won customers for life.
Every business (well, almost every), exclaims that customers are their number one priority, and, that’s how it should be…especially for those in the ‘people-taking-care-of-people’ business called hospitality. Benjamin Franklin said “Well done is better than well said”, and yet, so few in the hospitality industry ‘walk the talk’. Those who put ‘people first’ invariably get better results.
Getting back to Danny Meyer; he says “Service is the technical delivery of a product. Hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes its recipient feel. It takes both great service and great hospitality to rise to the top.”
Service rendered to a customer or guest without hospitality, then becomes an act of work done or offered, for pay or in response to a need or demand- more often in pursuit of profit than of customers. Perhaps it explains why we often receive customer service accompanied with a blank stare or grunt as a ‘greeting’.
The meteoric rise of hotel brands – many of who flag themselves as hospitality-related, but are no different to tech companies delivering services, rather than hospitality companies delivering experiences, bring that potential threat of diluting the centuries old core principles that differentiated true hospitality from mundane service.
Therein lies the difference.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor-Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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