Southern hospitality is famous for a reason. It’s ingrained in our culture – we take the responsibility of taking good care of our guests seriously down here. At Fryed Egg Productions, we bring that mindset to all of our interactions, and we believe your brand should, too.
Hospitality is about considering your guests’ needs and preferences at every step and making them a priority. No matter your organization, you will have infinite opportunities to make your customers and partners feel comfortable, welcome and appreciated. Make each of those opportunities count, and they’ll remember it. In our view, hospitality should touch everything you do as an organization.
Here’s how:
Consider the needs of others
Too often, organizations consider their own needs before the needs of others, and it shows in the way they behave. They’re too preoccupied with what they want and they don’t stop and consider what others want. That not only leads to poor customer service but it’s just bad business. How are you going to make a sale to a prospective customer if you’re only focused on what you can get out of it? You ultimately will not offer them the products or services that they need or want because you won’t even know what that is. In addition, everyone will see right through you if you’re not bothering to understand them – we all can tell who is authentic and earnest in their interest in us – and your reputation will suffer.
Details matter
When you host a meeting, do you have ice water, coffee or other beverages ready? Is there food? Have you anticipated what your guests might need in these circumstances? Maybe a pen and paper or paper copies of reports you’ll be citing? When you attend to these small but helpful details, your partners and clients will notice and take it as a sign of your general thoughtfulness. The point is to make their lives as easy as possible. They will feel welcome and comfortable and your interactions will be more productive and useful for everyone.
The brand experience
Your brand experience should be first and foremost about hospitality. Think about the customer and how they engage with your brand. If you have a retail store, for instance, is it organized and arranged to enhance the customer experience – to make it simple to navigate and find whatever they’re looking for? Or do you place form over function and design a storefront with eye-catching bells and whistles that confuses the customer and relegates their needs and preferences to second place? How are your team members trained to greet visitors? It should be specific and planned to ensure that it’s done right. This can be applied throughout your organization’s efforts. Is your website considerate and user-friendly or does it have other priorities that subtract from that? What’s your return policy? Try to think like a good host, and your customers will be grateful – and loyal.
Make it central to your culture
Consideration should be in the DNA of your organization. It should be so clearly emphasized and demonstrated by leadership that it becomes second nature for every team member that you have. Look for opportunities to teach how the tenets of hospitality should extend to your team’s interactions, both internally and externally. Managers should understand that they not only should teach their team members to bring a hospitality-geared view to their daily work but they should model that behavior for them. If your team isn’t treated right, they won’t treat others right either.
Fryed Egg can help build a new level of brand affinity for your business, identifying the audiences most important to your growth and working with you to engage them so that they feel important and valued. If you want to learn more about how Fryed Egg can help, contact us at (813) 478-0494 or [email protected] or visit www.FryedEgg.com.