Hospitality Mentality

Edited this article – November 2017

When I want to describe Hospitality Mentality I start with this definition I found online at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospitality:

Hospitality refers to the relationship between a guest and a host, wherein the host receives the guest with goodwill, including the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Louis, Chevalier de Jaucourt describes hospitality in the Encyclopédie as the virtue of a great soul that cares for the whole universe through the ties of humanity.

Why is Hospitality so Important

Yes, this definition sounds lofty, and yet I find it accurate in its definition and appropriate for how a hospitable person conducts themselves in their daily life whether at the job or in their personal life. I refer to it as a Hospitality Mentality. You’ve come in contact with these people whether they are the restaurant owner, or grocery store owner or your best friend. These same Hospitality Mentality type people are genuinely friendly and truly want to ensure that people have a good time in their presence. Being a hospitable person and hiring hospitable employees can benefit organizations in many areas beyond simply increasing profits.

Adapting Hospitality Mentality in your business can keep employee turnover down, improves morale, improves communication throughout the entire organization and fosters the law of reciprocity.

Hospitality Applies to more than F & B or Hotels

Many think that hospitality only pertains to Food & Beverage (F&B) operations and it’s simply not true. More to the point, if you want to increase success and grow your personal or business brand, you need to incorporate Hospitality Mentality into your daily business life. Hospitality and how you define it should be part of your corporate culture. Why? Because business owners are inviting their potential clients and existing clients into their house (restauranteurs often refer to their restaurant as their “house”) to engage in business. Exhibiting good hospitality is not only correct etiquette, it is the smart way to do business. Corporate cultures have evolved over the years with many successful organizations realizing that they have to adapt to a changing global business market that operates 24/7 in many different capacities.

Incorporating hospitality into your corporate culture is good for business and the community where you do business.

Hospitality SOPs

Incorporate Hospitality SOPs to create simple ways to make your customers like a guest in your home. You have an opportunity at every entry point of your business to act like a gracious host. Where are the entry points to your business? Everywhere, right! Especially nowadays, all customer engagements can be watched whether seeing owners’ on-line responses to customer complaints or dealing with an issue in their establishment. I make decisions on if I will do business somewhere based on how I see them interact with their employees and customers.

The public is watching everywhere, which makes it even more important to adopt a Hospitality Mentality.

Below are Ways Customers Enter Your Business:

Telephone – all telephone calls whether an inquiry, customer complaint or vendor calls are an opportunity for your employees to demonstrate their own Hospitality Mentality even it’s just taking a message or passing along a caller to the correct extension. Business owners now more than ever outsource telephone calls and don’t seem to care about the frustrating caller experiences. Smart business owners are starting to change this and expand their telephone call centers with better trained, humans answering the calls instead of robots.

Website/On-line customers – Figure out what your customers are looking for when they visit your site and don’t inundate your potential customers with emails and spam just to get your name in front of them. Some sites are for speed and efficiency (shoppers looking for price and delivery options) and other sites customers will stay longer and want to research more information before making a purchase, so deliver what your customers want with a nice experience. Periodically, visit your own site as one of your customers to see what happens when your customer visits your own site. View it as the customers see it.

In-person – At your corporate office, restaurant or store a guest should be treated nicely regardless of the reason for their visit. Empower your employees to provide hospitality to all your guests. You never know who is sitting in your lobby watching how your employees treat people or how the management treats their employees, so foster a Hospitality Mentality at all levels in your organization.

Daily Interactions – We never know who could end up being a customer. Some business owners make the mistake of trying to fawn over just their paying customers or whom they think will be their next paying customer. This is short sided because anyone can refer a customer to you based on all kinds of interactions. You could be nice to someone in a parking lot and that person could refer you to the biggest deal of your life.

Lastly,

It’s about being nice to your employees and customers. It’s about consistently being hospitable throughout the day with your vendors, engineering, HR, and security departments. When people feel welcomed they are more inclined to be a better employee and/or guest. Sure, there are exceptions to every rule. Always protect yourself and your business. Being nice is good for business and so is cybersecurity, loss prevention, security, and risk management. Balance your life and business to protect yourself, your team, your assets, and customers.

#Hospitality #HospitalityMentality #CustomerService #GuestService #EthicalLeadership