Holidays – An opportunity to seriously explore customer service

As we prepare to go on holiday we look forward to positive customer service, the opportunity to enjoy some rest and relaxation, anticipating a happy, stress free break. We expect hotel, restaurant, bar and travel staff to be welcoming, informative and to contribute towards a successful, enjoyable holiday.

A few incidents on my recent holiday brings to mind the content of previous blogs discussing the importance of ensuring a consistent, positive customer experience. The staff were excellent, polite, cheerful and helpful. But some of the management logistics created problems that detracted from the expected pleasure from the holiday. With some forethought, potentially all of these problems could have been avoided.

This made me consider how well we manage our own businesses to ensure complete customer satisfaction. Perhaps our staff are doing a great job but how we manage or organise them or the procedures we ask them to comply with actually detract from the overall customer experience.

I know I provided objective feedback to the holiday company but I suspect a significant proportion of the other unhappy holiday makers who were vociferously complaining would not make the effort to indicate to the holiday company how they felt and how the holiday was spoiled for them.

How do you know what your customers are saying about you? Have you asked them? Perhaps you don’t want to know but you should, your business survival could depend on it!