The Customer Journey

“Become your own Hotel Inspector”

 

Dear Hotel Owner or Hotel Manager

How would you like to become your own hotel inspector, or train your staff to become your personal team of hotel inspectors giving you valuable and objective feedback where ever and whenever you want?

How often do you put yourself in your customers’ shoes?  Taking the customer journey is something every business should do, not just hospitality businesses.

When was the last time you took the entire customer journey and were totally objective about everything you saw?

And if you ask your team to do this, do they know what they are looking for?

 

“Take the Customer Journey to see what your guests see”

 

The journey starts with the research, the booking and the journey. How easy it is to find you on line and then make a booking – either on line, email or phone? Does what you say on your website give all the necessary information to make a decision, make a booking and arrive in one piece? It’s often the little things that irritate our guests and spoil the experience before they’ve even arrived.

Then take the journey your customer takes from the point of arriving to the point of departure. This starts with driving into the car park, your walk to reception, and to your room, what you see out of the window, the service in the restaurant, how comfy your beds, the cleanliness of the public toilets, your greeting in the bar, the speed of check out: everything a guest might see, hear or experience.

The problem is we can become oblivious and it’s quite difficult to get a real first-hand experience as the service you get will never be quite the same as your guests’ experience. So involve your team in the process, especially new staff members who will be experiencing things for the first time. Even old hands can give you another perspective by experiencing another department – ask your kitchen staff to take the customer journey to reception, your housekeeping staff to dine in the restaurant (and bring a guest so they come when off duty, and see the full customer journey), your front of house team to stay the night.

The customer journey does not end once they drive out of the car park. What follow up do you do with your guests?

 

The Self Audit Checklist

 

This comprehensive audit checklist makes the process so simple.

It enables you to take you or your team through all the stages, so you can:

  • Identify operational shortfalls or gaps in your systems before they become a problem
  • Use at re openings following seasonal closures or following refurbishments to check everything is working as it should be
  • As a regular routine periodic check involving your team in the process and gain their buy in
  • Use as part of your induction for new starters to give some structure to their orientation and familiarisation of your services and offers before you let them lose on your guests
  • As a customer service training exercise to help staff see and appreciate what the customer sees
  • Enable you to see everything from a guest’s perspective, to add an objective viewpoint and get a fresh pair of eyes on what you see every day and may become oblivious to
  • Identify priorities for maintenance, systems and training that will give you the greatest return

So you can take the actions needed to give your hotel a competitive edge.

 

The checklist comes in two instantly downloadable formats:

  • A pdf if you just want to use it as it is
  • An excel format so you can make it into a working document, allowing you to:
    ~ add your own sections and standards to suit your own hotel
    ~ section out the departments enabling you to allocate to different personnel
    ~ break down into sections to phase out over a period of time
    ~ draw up an action plan and sort by priorities and allocated responsibilities, for easy tracking.

Both formats can be instantly downloaded, so you can get started straight away; no need to hang around for bulky packages through the post.

The audit includes over 200 check points in the following sections:

  • Research (as undertaken by guests before booking)
  • Website
  • Booking
  • Arrival
  • Bedrooms
  • Bathrooms
  • Drinking and dining
  • Public areas
  • Checkout
  • Customer Service
  • Follow up

(Please note this only includes accommodation operations. Meetings, events, spa and leisure are not yet included).

It’s the little details that make the difference to the customer experience, so in the checklist you’ll find not just the obvious, but some of the attention to detail that can so easily be missed. And the great thing is, once you’ve introduced these details to your team it will be all the more easy to get them to maintain the standards you and your guests expect.

 

To get your hands on the Customer Journey Audit Checklist AND the Profit Sensitivity Analysis for just £97 order right here.