A business is known by the People it keeps

You know when you read a great book or see a good film and you’re just bursting to tell people? Well I’m a bit like that with service. Bad service I try to forget, but with good service I just get the urge to tell people about it, so here goes…

I had the pleasure of staying in the new-ish St Pancras hotel recently, as part of my sister’s birthday celebrations (it was a big one!). Wow! What a stunning place, matched I was delighted to find, by equally stunning service.

Waiters, receptionists, cleaners, porters – excellent service right across the board – all, without exception, smiling, friendly and helpful. They all looked like they were enjoying their work too, rather than having been told to smile – you can tell the difference. 

I chatted to quite a few staff over the couple of days we were there, and despite the number of different nationalities represented, you could tell they had all bought into the hotel’s vision and their values. Such a diverse workforce all singing from the same hymn sheet.

It was a real pleasure to stay there, and when they brought a lovely birthday cake to the room, it really was the icing on the cake!  So many hotels, and businesses in general are often great at the frills, but they haven’t got their basic service right.

You know what I mean, you get the lovely birthday cake but then have to deal with an unsmiling waiter or an impatient receptionist and you think, actually, stuff the cake I’d rather just have good basic service.

We often talk to clients about getting the cake right before you start messing about with icing, and this was a great example of a business who did just that – focused first on the consistency of the day to day, and then looked to add the extra unexpected frills to delight their customers – like my sister’s birthday cake.

What was really clear to me, because I look for things like this…was that this hotel had a followed a set of simple, logical, and repeatable systems, that their staff knew simply as ‘the way we do things round here’.  They’d clearly got their recruitment and training right too.

Each person knew what they were doing, they knew what was expected of them and they ‘owned’ their little piece of the business. I’m betting the manager had spent time not just explaining the importance of the role and where it fitted into the bigger picture but also that each person, whatever their role, was the face of the the hotel every time they interacted with a Customer.

It was a joy to behold, and something for every business to aspire to.

Do one thing: Ask yourself how you compare to the St Pancras Renaissance. Do your team all sing off the same hymn sheet? Do your customers love doing business with you? Do you have the systems that make you as consistent as they are?

If your answers to those questions aren’t what you’d like them to be, then join us for our next McFreedom Secrets Workshop, and take your first small steps towards consistency. Click this link to hear from past participants and sign up.

For more information on how MPL can help you visit www.mariannepage.co.uk or contact me on hello@mariannepage.co.uk