Service Culture = how things get done

Isn’t it interesting that a simple word can have such a huge impact on your businesses. How do you mean you ask? Well take for example the following:

You walk into a restaurant for lunch and no one else is there, you stand there torn between wanting to walk out or stay, but it’s too late, the waiters have seen you, customers they think and make a bee line for you. Your expectations have already been tainted and there is instant lack of trust in the food being fantastic and the service being awesome.

You meet a salesperson for the first time and you reach out to shake their hands, they wipe their hands on their pants and then squeeze the life out of yours. Then to make matters worse they mispronounce your name and continue to do so for the whole meeting. Am I really going to trust this person to sell my house?

You have a great week at a resort in Noosa and upon your return you get a letter from management suggesting that you deliberately didn’t pay for the bottle of red wine that you took out of the mini bar on day one. And if you didn’t wish to contest the charge it will be debited against your credit card.

In all of these examples the reason why I perhaps wont use their services again has nothing to do with the product they have but to do with their service, culture...how things get done.

So who is in charge of the service culture in your businesses, are you spending enough time on it, training your teams and reviewing to make sure they have it right? Or are you like many other businesses in the current market not spending money on training? Are people writing your business off simply because in that few seconds you have to impress someone your people got it wrong.