"Inn at Little Washington" - Discussion regarding exceptional customer service. Read the article below and answer the questions at the end:
Guests travel worldwide to the Inn at Little Washington in a small village 70 miles west of Washington, DC. The inn has won multiple awards in its industry and owners Reinhardt Lynch and Patrick O'Connell take great satisfaction in knowing that both their hotel and their restaurant have won Mobil five-star ratings (the highest ranking achievable) an unbelievable five times! Although the inn is known for its spectacular food and cozy, quaint accommodations, its customer service is its most famous feature. O'Connell offers these suggestions for "the perfect experience."
Measure the customer's mood. When a party arrives at the dining room, the captain assigns a "mood rating" for the guests' state of mind, a number between 1 (low) and 10 (high) that indicates their level of contentment. According to O'Connell, "No one should leave here below a 9." To transform guests' attitudes, staff members hold nothing back.
Cultivate expertise. Lynch and O'Connell demand that every employee be courteous to guests. They require employees to develop an extraordinary degree of competence in their jobs, learning everything they can to become more proficient in serving customers. Everyone-from managers to waiters-gets a research project, a topic on which they must become experts.
Tolerate failure-once. Transforming guests from unhappy grumps to satisfied customers who are eager to return means that staffers have to be "on" 100 percent of the time and execute their jobs flawlessly. No one is perfect all of the time, however. When a gaffe occurs, O'Connell points out the mistake immediately, a practice he calls "instant correction." Employees do not have the opportunity to form bad habits.
Hire for attitude. Lynch and O'Connell hire employees based on their attitudes. "We found that over time, nice people can be taught almost anything," says O'Connell.
Don't say "no". The owners forbid staffers from answering a customer's question with the word "no." They want to avoid the negative connotations of the word altogether. If a customer asks, "Is this dessert sweet?" the waiter will not say "no," even if the dish is spicy. Instead, he or she will describe the dessert in detail, allowing the guest to make an informed decision. To help employees stay informed, Lynch and O'Connell publish an in-house monthly newsletter and a list of the 12 most frequently asked questions and their answers.
- What do you think of O'Connell's suggestions?
- Are these suggestions applicable to other businesses?
- Can you think of other businesses in other industries that have accomplished this same level of customer service?