Have you ever been someplace and received amazing service? Admittedly, those “places” are becoming fewer and far between. I find myself regularly disappointed with the service I receive. And all too often the staff acts as if they were doing me a favor by providing the service I paid for.
If there’s a silver lining to bad service, it’s that I now appreciate good service very much and I typically tell everyone I know about it. So, this is one of those times…
On our summer trip to our quarterly mastermind session, this time it was held in Napa Valley, we stayed at the Silverado Hotel. The place has been around a very long time, has an amazing PGA caliber golf course a top shelf spa and staff who always seem to smile.
On this particular trip my wife Maria came along. Did I mention they had a top shelf spa…? To her surprise, when she was getting ready to go to dinner, she realized she forgot her hair brush. Normally, this is no big deal, there’s a Walgreens on every corner, not in wine country. So, Maria being the trouper that she is, found a way to survive the night.
While we were having a refreshment in the lounge, our waitress overheard us talking about her hair brush, we struck up a conversation and Maria asked her if she knew where we could purchase one. She said the sundry’s store was closed for the night and that there was Safeway a few miles down the road. We figured, we’d go solve the problem tomorrow.
Well, about 10 minutes later, the waitress came back to let us know that she had sent someone out to get Maria her hair brush. She found us at the restaurant and handed my wife the new hair brush. Since they had one at the sundry’s shop, I asked them to put it on my room and tipped her well for her time. Everyone in our party, all 12 of us, were impressed.
This was such a small gesture of good will and it made a huge difference to our stay. The waitress could have easily ignored our conversation. She could have dispensed the advice about the nearest location to find the hair brush and felt her job would have been done. Frankly, we’ve become so accustom to a lack of service it wouldn’t have surprised us had she done just that. But she didn’t, and here we are today giving the Silverado some free PR and good will of our own.
After my stay at the Silverado, I found the service wasn’t limited to that server. The general manager is doing a very good job setting the tone for his/her staff and has created a culture of service and smiles. This is how it should be in the service business. No matter the business you’re in, make your customers/clients want to come back again and again.
What are the small things in your practice that you and your staff could be doing differently? How could you institute a culture of service in your business? If a client of yours wrote a story about you today, what would it sound like?
Be sure to set the example yourself, you’re the leader, show them the way. Serve excellently.
Building a better business, one good deed at a time…
