You most likely heard about the service profit chain before and the ‘magical’ concept behind it. At the end of the service profit chain stands the purpose of your company, the long-term profitability and sustainability of your hotels.

The St. Regis Butler Service

How can you get the most profit for your hotel, and who gives you the most amount of money? … of course happy guests! Happy guests will spend more money each time they stay with you, stay more often and longer, and tell their friends about it. And you probably know how powerful word of mouth can be. Working at my previous hotel in Shanghai the HR director went on a business trip to the US with representatives of the owning company to experience the brand and what it stands for. At one of the properties during their trip the HR director ordered room service for the group who decided to stay in for the evening, and wanted to order a simple Chinese noodle soup, something that her guests would appreciate and enjoy. Once the order was delivered up to the room, it was not what she had in mind for her guests and called the room service order taker back to correct the misunderstanding. The order taker didn’t try to empathize, told her that it wasn’t a misunderstanding, and that she received what she ordered (needless to say a very disappointing and discouraging experience). The HR director came back from the business trip and told this story of how one bad interaction can leave a lasting negative impression at the next operations meeting and general assembly, and I keep telling this story as an example of how powerful word of mouth can be (unfortunately negative word of mouth will always be more popular than positive). So striving to keep your guests happy and satisfied makes sense.

How do you keep your guests happy? Right, with happy associates. Sounds too easy to be true? Well, did you ever receive really good service from someone who did not enjoy her job or doesn’t care? You probably could tell that it’s not sincere and just doesn’t feel right. Happy employees deliver passionate, sincere and caring service to make your guests happy. They will go above and beyond, not because they have to, but because they enjoy doing it. Having learned in a very traditional hotel in Austria, I was very much focused on standards and service excellence, always wanting to strive for perfection, and having the highest expectations for myself and for others in return. In my first real management position in China, I was trying to train the employees in my team to deliver exactly this, excellent service without exceptions, and perfection at every turn. I still remember the review with my previous boss very vividly, and how he told me that I need to change my management style to be successful… something that I found difficult to believe, and didn’t want to hear at first. I wasn’t happy about him telling me that I need to change and tried to argue his feedback. It took me a couple of days/weeks to understand that he was right, and I am still thankful that he didn’t care about having to push back on me trying to argue and simply wanted me to grow and become a better leader. He told me that standards and striving for perfection is important, but the foundation for all this will always be fun! You need to enjoy what you are doing and have fun at it! As a leader you need to be able to motivate your employees to be successful and achieve great results because they enjoy what they are doing, and not because they have to.

Now we covered that we want to build a culture that encourages our employees to have fun at work, make our guests happy in return so that they spend more money and tell their friends about it. But who exactly is responsible for happy employees? It’s not only your manager or HR department, but it’s the leader in you and every employee in the hotel. Everyone has the power to be a real hero, and make the people around you happy!

The Service Profit Chain is not magical at all, but very real, and there is nothing more encouraging and exciting than working in a business whose success is directly linked to the happiness of its employees. Wouldn’t you want to work in a place like this?

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