Hotels: Your Guests Aren't Always Right

Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909 coined the phrase “the customer is always right.” Why do businesses all around the world use this phrase?

1，Convince customers they’re the main priority

2，Influence employees to give customers good service

Employees feed off their manager or bosses actions, personality, and motives. Every day, your hotel caters and serves hundreds of guests and customers who have different demands and expectations. Because not everyone can be pleased, your hospitality staff will undoubtedly run into irritating and irrational customers. Your staff is your driving force, the physical face that interacts with every guest that enters your establishment. Just as your staff values customer relations, they expect the support of YOU.

Don’t settle for just making your customers happy, put your employees first. Putting your employees first will ultimately lead to better customer service and a happier employee. Employees with experience and knowledge love to know that they are valued and that you have their back during difficult customer situations. This is not to say that bad employees exist that give lousy customer service, but the notion that “customers are always right” is counterproductive.

When your staff is spending more of their time trying to be nice to rude customers, and less time getting repeat business from respectful customers, there’s a problem. Logically you have to ask yourself, “Why are abusive people getting better treatment?” This does not mean that issues can’t be resolved or that you shouldn’t listen first and ask questions later, but there should be more emphasis on servicing those that deserve it.3. Results in Worse Customer Service and Wasted Time

I would recommend reading about Alexander Kjerulf, a happiness expert for Woohoo Inc. As an author for the Huffington Post, Kjerulf’s post about “Customer’s Aren’t Always Right” went viral. With over 300k likes on Facebook and over 60,000 shares, the idea has started to come full circle in America.

From Alexander Kjerulf’s viral post, he writes about Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency, where the CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote a book about his approach, which is to Put the customer second- Put your people first and watch’em kick butt. From watching and reading many of Alexander’s videos and articles, his points coincide with Rosenbluth’s. There is a big difference between employee satisfaction and employee happiness. Rosenbluth writes that when a manager puts their employees first, their employees put their customers first. Happiness in the workplace leads to:

Employees who are motivated

Employees who have energy

Employees who care about taking care of their customers

You may be thinking, “why is it a waste of time to deal with a paying customer?” At some point respect and dignity goes a long way. Mistakes happen, we’re all human. If you turn an “oops” into an “opportunity” to help a customer, and they are still not respectful or appreciative, it’s not worth the time or resources to meet expectations that aren’t realistic. As Kjerulf mentions, 80% of your stress should not be put on 20% of your revenue.

Learning from Customer Complaints

Bill Gates was quoted saying, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” Rather than becoming defensive and escalating the situation, teach your employees to listen and be sympathetic. Only after listening and asking questions, can you begin to formulate a plan of action to resolve your customer’s issue. Here are 3 ways to deal with unhappy customers effectively.

The phrase “customers aren’t always right” doesn’t mean you can run from issues or mistakes. Successfully dealing with customer issues builds credibility and loyalty. Teach your customer service representatives to put themselves in the guests' shoes. Relate, relate, relate. Were the customers' expectations not met? Could your organization have done something differently? Ask questions of the customers, and then ask questions of your organization. If the failure was apart of your organization’s wrongdoing, then learn from the mistake and fix it.