Recently I posted a quick survey on linkedin.com
The question was this
Q. In order what is the most important part of running a hospitality business?
A. Marketing
B. Operations
C. Staff Training
D. Design
E. Financial awareness
G. Customer service
I had a great response from people in all areas of hospitality and I would now like to share with you my answer to the question.
It can be argued that all of the six points are equally important and throughout the life span of a hospitality business this can be true but I want to look at the question in a different way.
If I had prioritise one of the list to make sure a restaurant or bar was to survive in the current climate I would have to choose customer service. This decision that was my first instinct and has been a constant in my working life but I couldn't keep Financial awareness from also being at the top, lets be honest without financial awareness where is the business plan? People open a restaurant with the intention of making money. OK, there are the ones who tell you its for the love of food, but lets be honest they need to make money to spend money on their Fois Gras and truffles so they have to have an idea of Financial awareness.
So does that mean I think that should be number one, well no. As I said my choice is customer service. The days have long gone when it was OK to think that a customer was wrong or an idiot for complaining, the time has past when the waiters sniggered when a customer ordered a Sauvignon when they were eating a Ribeye. Now the emphasis is on providing the sort of service that makes customers feel that it was worth spending their hard earned money.
In the current climate more than ever customers want and need value for money, they are bombarded with TV shows telling them their rights, magazine articles explaining how restaurants work and websites allowing anyone to become the next A.A Gill. We as hospitality professionals must do all we can to meet and exceed the customers expectations. By delivering great service and not average service a business can start to build a loyal fan base who will return again and again. Customer service should be a fundamental of any business and none more so than hospitality, it's essential therefore that delivering great customer service and going that extra mile should be regarded as the most important area and everyone working within the business should be aware of this.
So customer service is at the top of my list and what I consider as the priority. This is then followed closely by the financial awareness as there is no point supplying the best service in town if you cant actually afford to stay open.
After these two I start to group the others together. Next on my list would be operations and staff training. Some would say staff training is more essential than operations and if you want great customer service then you must train your staff. This could be true but I believe that the majority of people will follow the leader and so if the business owner believed in great customer service and demonstrated that on a daily basis then the staff will follow. So I would say as much as training is important and it is very important, you have to know what your working operations are to start with. There is no point training the staff to do one thing and then deciding that the way you operate is completely different, this is a false economy and a waste of yours and your staffs time. Establish what you are going to do first (this undoubtedly will be tweaked from time to time) then formulate your training plan to work in line with your operations. Streamlined and efficient planning will deliver greater results.
The final two are design and marketing. There will be people out there who would completely disagree with me and would say that marketing is the most important. I understand their opinion and through my experience working as a consultant I get asked about marketing more than anything else.
My answer is always the same. Marketing is very important and the more you can do to get your business noticed the better but do it correctly. Don't waste thousands of pounds on advertising but look to the free options instead. When you do start marketing your business make sure its at the right time, if the customer service is poor work on that first to improve it, if you don't turn a profit because your spending too much look at your books and cut costs, if the way you work is not efficient and doesn't deliver what you first envisaged restructure your operations, if the staff don't work properly or deliver the correct level of service train them until they do and if the restaurant, pub, bar or hotel that you operate is a turn off to customers look to redesign and attract people through the door. Once all of these areas are correct then look to market the business because there's no point spending time and money on getting people to your venue only for them to be let down and never come back again.
So there it is my list:
Customer Service
Financial awareness
Operations
Staff Training
Design
Marketing
Kind Regards
Philip
www.bandrresolve.com
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