Delivering exceptional customer experience starts with Employee Recognition and Appreciation. It’s well regarded that good management reflects upon identifying and acknowledging the efforts of its workers. The virtuous cycle of business’s performance therefore, does not start with the service given by the employees, but the extent to which they are rewarded for their performance.
Customer Retention within the Hospitality arena is a challenge of its own. Although numerous factors contribute to becoming regular customers, there is one, which outweighs them all. Not the concept of your business or the atmosphere that you pursue to create, not even the food or drinks that you serve will impact your guests decisions as much as the direct customer service interaction from your employees.
If our performance is monitored, and rewarded we naturally, as humans feel better and therefore are willing to deliver that little extra each time. The happier our staff, the more likely they are to channel their positive energy to our customers which ultimately leads to a higher level of customer experience.
“Basic” recognition and simple signs of appreciation can go a long way. The key lies in ability to spot situations where your employees put that extra effort into their daily duties and responsibilities. Their efforts will inevitably show in the way that your customers perceive your company. Very often the hospitality environment is a fast paced and challenging arena to play in, meaning that only the extremes become of value to be noticed. Unfortunately those extremes often tend to focus on the negatives rather then the positives, creating a false connotation that recognition equals disapproval of ones actions.
Recognition means acknowledging someone before their peers for specific accomplishments achieved, actions taken or attitudes exemplified through their behaviour. But how can managers effectively and fairly recognize their employee’s performance. The solution lies in the technological advances. We are only but humans, and we cannot see or be everywhere at the same time. However, we can use various systems to collect data insight; which will enable us to monitor, control and therefore respond to our employee performance all day, every day.
getWaiter! helps companies navigate towards employees deserving recognition and appreciation. Whilst providing valuable passively and directly collected data, our system is designed to help management teams keep a close eye on the businesses performance.
Imagine if you had an access to a constant stream of live customer feedback; little nuggets of lovely appraisal which your customers can effortlessly leave behind FREE of charge. Imagine if you could access real data showing you customers waiting times. Now, imagine that with only those 2 metrics, recognition can become a daily ‘piece of cake’ that you are happy to consume.
Just like any data is most valuable once freshly collected, your recognition of employees is equally important to happen in the heat of the moment. Sometimes the smallest of things make the biggest of differences. Showing appreciation to your employees by acknowledging excellent performance and the kind of behaviour you want to encourage is best done through simple expressions and statements.
Free appreciation tips and techniques:
- Do not forget that the most powerful and essential recognition comes directly from your customers. Their feedback becomes a metric; through which you can effectively spot and therefore channel through the appropriate appreciation techniques.
- Make your life simpler; by ensuring that your feedback surveys actually ask for the name of the person that has served the customer. This small amendment will make it easier to point directly to employees who have delivered that little extra.
- Display quotes from the positive feedback collected or online reviews; which praise exceptional customer service given by your employees. This will help to boost the motivation and the reputation of your business.
- Combine recognition and appreciation in the form of a public statement of thanks in front of the employee’s co-workers or a team, citing specific examples of what they’ve done that has positively impacted the organisation.
- Remember that recognition and appreciation starts with small acts of kindness; which help to boost your employee’s wellbeing and therefore your businesses as a whole.
Appreciation is a non-financially bonding type of reward. It can go a long way or it can run its course fairly quickly. Rewards and Incentives help keep our employees committed, motivated and retained in our businesses a huge part in the winning formula amongst the fierce competition that the Hospitality Industry throws at us.
