Not too long ago, good customer service meant a warm welcome and personal attention. Today, great customer service can mean leaving the customer alone to fend for themselves. That shift is thanks, in part, to technology.
It’s the smartphone that allows customers to be simultaneously social and anti-social in how they relate to and interact with service staff. Websites like TripAdvisor, OpenTable and Yelp have given customers a voice, and restaurants and hotels are listening -- and responding.
“Great customer service can bump a review one star higher,” says Yelp Miami’s community manager, Cassie Glenn, who also reports that Yelpers say they don’t return to restaurants with terrible service, even if the food’s good.
According to a study out of Harvard Business School, that single star represents revenue, and each additional approval star can bump up a restaurant’s earnings by anywhere between five to nine percent.
Glenn says the sure way to get a one star review is to not bother to greet the customer at all. A restaurant host who doesn’t say hello to a guest for 15 minutes is costing that restaurant business.
Charles Bell, director of operations for The Genuine Hospitality Group in Miami’s Design District, says his staffers meet daily to discuss reviews. Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink, the company’s flagship restaurant, has more than 950 reviews on Yelp.
Servers, bartenders, hosts and bussers receive praise or harsh critique from those reviews. Bell says it’s company practice to follow up with complaining diners. That’s the social piece of customer service, but there are many customers using smartphones to get service in an anti-social way. Professor Joel Fiegenheimer at Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management School says when he travels, there are times, after a late-night flight, where he’d prefer to avoid the hotel concierge altogether.
“I just would be very happy to take my credit card, slide it though the kiosk, get my room key and go to bed,” he said.
Fiegenheimer is not alone. Millenials are the demographic driving this demand for self sufficiency. Because they are digital natives who now outnumber Baby Boomers, the hospitality sector is paying close attention to their behaviors in categories like check-in, payment and shopping, and dining.
The Starwood Hotels and Resorts chain, which operates hotels like the W South Beach and the Westin Fort Lauderdale, is already experimenting with keyless mobile check in, and at one of their properties in California, Starwood has put robotic butlers to work.
The self sufficiency shift is also happening at fast-casual chain restaurants. Panera Bread has an app that allows you to order and pay for your take-out meal – right from your smartphone. When it’s time for pick-up, the customer walks to the counter, finds the bag with their name on it and leaves. They didn’t even have to talk to anyone.
