What does it take to have happy customers? What keeps guests coming back time and time again or telling their friends and family? These two indicators are great measures of success in tourism to know when a product or experience has nailed it. That the delivery of the guest experience is so good, that guests say yes, to coming back and do and likewise they ‘would’ refer the product or experience to friends or family and better yet, they do.
Word of mouth is the ultimate. Its benefit is valuable for reputation, financial gains, progress, continuous feedback and so much more. So how do we ensure that the whole team is absolutely on board and knows just how important the guest experience is?
Here are a few of our tips for you to check in on.
- Do you talk about it regularly with your staff and team or teams?
- Do the various teams recognise how integral and important their individual and cross-team / department collaboration is?
- Do you measure the feedback from guests and share that with the team randomly or on a regular basis?
- Does the guest have an opportunity to provide you with feedback to answer those questions ie. 1. Would they come back again? 2. Would they refer a friend or family?
- Do you use the feedback as a way of measuring how you’re tracking with overall guest experience?
- Are you familiar with every touchpoint on the guest or customer journey, so that you know how your guest is experiencing your product or service?
- Are you sharing feedback or quiet about sharing what guests think?
- Do you have a good system or process for measuring how the team is tracking when it comes to delivering on their part of the guest experience?
- Are you considering your guest experience in the early part of the journey or only post delivery ie. in the attraction or conversion phase of researching, enquiring and booking?
A few ideas to get you thinking above. Do any of these particular questions stand as a glaring gap and opportunity for you and the team to work on?
If you did implement a small tweak, slight change or larger improvement what could it mean for the guest?
What might it mean for the team?
Generally, clients will say to me, it’s the difference between inconsistency and consistency. In spite of best intentions for example, Monday morning rolls around and the team meeting is canceled, because there is too much to do, so again that team feedback as a group isn’t provided or because of shifts it’s all too hard to have a whole team meeting. There might be a few random one-off conversations, however, not everyone gets together in the same ‘room’. Or perhaps the ripple whispers happen and what the conversation started out as on Monday morning, by Wednesday once it’s gotten around the ‘key message’ sounds very different.
Consistency in providing a great guest experience is vital for tourism businesses, as much now as ever before. Particularly as guests will not hesitate to give feedback or speak their minds. You may not hear it, if they ‘can’t be bothered sharing it with you, however, rest assured they will share it with friends or family if the guest experience wasn’t great.
It may be having an impact without you knowing.
Are you and the team delivering the Ultimate in Guest Experience or is there some work required?
Genevieve “Raising the bar” Matthews
P.S Whenever you’re ready… here are 4 ways I can help you develop and work on your business leadership capabilities:
- Grab a free copy of Smash Indecision and Overwhelm, 4 Steps for Better Business Leadership E-book
It’s the road map to overcoming doubt and indecision, how to deal with “overwhelm” to improve your business leadership capabilities. —Click Here
- Join the Tourism Business Leader’s Facebook group and connect with like-minded leaders focused on building highly effective teams
It’s our Facebook community where smart leaders get to learn more about creativity, leadership and performance for tourism business success. —Click Here
- Join our Tourism Pro-Team Program
Helping tourism business leaders develop their skills to improve engagement, accountability and performance of the team. If you’d like to work with me so you can stop being reactive, have the difficult conversations and drive performance to get the results you want and know the business need then…message PRO to me here and I’ll get you all the details.
- Let’s get the Whole Team Together
Would you like a different perspective and someone else at the front of the room or on zoom/teams to lead regular and consistent team building, accountability, and engaging learning experiences, that drive results and outcomes for individuals, teams, and the business? If you feel a little challenged with everything going on, maybe sounding like a cracked recorded saying things repeatedly, or actually not 100% how to motivate and inspire the team, given the current nature of business, it may be useful for us to chat. Message TEAM to me here… and tell me a little about the business, your team, and what you’d like to work on together.
