1. industry
comment
Excellence not Abandonment
Mahatma Gandhi, the famous Indian
leader, expressed his view of how important customers are,
we serve. It is about taking care of the guest like you would
take care of your grandmother. By offering service excellence,
very aptly: “A customer is the most important visitor on the we expose ourselves to the opportunity of being rewarded
premises. They are not dependent on us, we are dependent with very handsome gratuities. Many sceptics would say that
on them. They are not an interruption of our world, they are we have no tipping culture in the UK. Well, we have news for
the purpose of it. They are not an outsider to our business, you, we have. By offering service excellence, you will receive
they are part of it. We are not doing them a favour by serving gratuities and good ones, time and time again.
them, they are doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity Picture this. It is a Saturday night, the bar is very busy. The
to do so”. So why is it the general culture in our hospitality bartender has just made two fantastic cocktails, the guest has
industry to abandon our guests, rather than offering service just paid for them and left no gratuity and the bartender is
excellence? Is it ignorance or is it our culture? not happy. Why? Probably because he forgot to smile, he
Generally, the majority of operators focus all their energy and forgot to acknowledge them when he was serving another
attention on finding the perfect site; raising the significant guest, he forgot to welcome them to the bar, he forgot to
Peter Dundas and finance to create their vision, employing the services of embark on some dialogue with his guests, he made the
leading designers and architects, creating a stunning venue drinks, but he took ten minutes to do so, he got chatting to
Ronnie Gamble
with amazing furniture and an incredible sound system, his colleagues, holding back his guests from enjoying
of Luscious Liquid hosting some of the hottest DJs in town and then, at the very themselves, and finally the icing on the cake, he forgot to
see service last stage prior to opening, employing staff by availability thank them.
standards rather than by ability, and offering little or no training. This Making great drinks is not enough. Your guests are there to
happens time and time again. Why after investing such be wowed. It may sound a simple process to look after a
slipping
considerable finance would you choose not to invest in guest, but how many times have you experienced exactly that
training your staff to offer service excellence to your guests? kind of service? We would suggest many times, and that is
Ultimately, it is your guests that will assist you in making the failure to deliver just basic courteous service, not
your venture financially rewarding. It is, therefore, good excellence. Conversely, how many times have you been
business to train your staff. wowed? Perhaps your server did something extraordinary to
One old argument constantly reiterated is that as we are in enhance your experience; perhaps they did something to take
the industry of transient staff, why waste money on training your experience beyond your expectation or perhaps they just
them? Who makes it a transient employment market? simply delighted you. Unfortunately, not often enough.
Perhaps ourselves, by choosing not to invest in people. I am We are constantly being told of how many guests hear about
sure we have all heard many people say “ What if I train them one bad experience in a bar. Consider the chain reaction of
and they leave?”. Well, we would suggest “What if you don’t discussion between friends, colleagues and associates about
and they stay”. that bad experience. If you only give one bad experience each
We constantly hear the industry talking about market day, then consider how that multiplies up over a year. That is
saturation and the fact that over the last ten years, there has not good publicity, not good practice and certainly not good
been an explosion in the number of new licences issued. We business. So, can you afford not to invest in training your
hear them commenting on the fact that it is so competitive employees on how to deliver service excellence?
Luscious Liquid offer a wide out there and that discounting strategies and employing the Thankfully, we are gradually seeing more and more
range of training and consultancy best DJs are amongst the only routes to success. Yet the operators sharing this viewpoint, and investing in their
services to the hospitality industry majority do not seem to see that service excellence could be people and ultimately their guests. We are seeing a new wave
and they believe passionately in their unique selling point, and that maybe we do actually of companies offering training and consultancy services to
encouraging and assisting this
need more bars, but ones that are offering service excellence. the hospitality industry. Jointly they share this vision, that in
industry to offer service
What is service excellence? Without going into the physical order to guarantee success in business, investment has to be
excellence to their guests
cycle of service, excellence is about doing ordinary things made in training service excellence.
consistently.
extraordinarily well, it is about going beyond what is One day, service excellence may be universal rather than just
Luscious Liquid expected. It is about adding value and integrity to every a vision. Perhaps, one day, we will all realise, we are in a very
tel: 0141-552-8778 interaction. It is about being at your best with every privileged position to be given the opportunity by our guests,
email:info@lusciousliquid.co.uk customer. It is about discovering new ways to delight those to serve them. We certainly hope so.
80)