A Checklist Never Served a Guest

37 minutes ago

8 min read

Lackluster hospitality really ticks me off - and it is driving your customers away.

The Science and strategy of Customer Experience (CX) often fails where brand meets people on the front line. Translating the experience into repeatable, relatable, personalized hospitality is where there is opportunity to build relationships with customers.

The problem is that so many people are out there talking about strategy and insight and experience that they forget at some point you have to translate that into actions that touch the guest.

This is why the idea of Total Experience (TX) is so crucial to success - it is not just about the customer, guest, or consumer, it is about the team and how they are led (or not), coached (or not), and developed (or not).

Tuck in, I've been on the frontlines all fall (and a lifetime before that), watching, coaching, and working with businesses of all types. And oh, do I have stories for you.

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As I've spent time in organizations across the country, I've been seeing more and more of:

Guests walking up to counters with no greeting or acknowledgement
Continuous misses in quality and execution
Customers looking for products as employees walk by them
Issues with kiosk ordering or payment with no assistance in sight
Food and beverage that is completely underwhelming and poorly executed

And there is no excuse for any of it.

These issues, while they seem driven by process or employee engagement, are a direct result of leadership shortfalls.

Here are some of the top styles that we worked with this year to improve the customer experience.

The Flyby Leader

I was working with a restaurant group and they have been struggling with general operational execution. As I watched their operations in motion it became crystal clear why they weren't driving results. They were hosting large training events that were poorly staged and not led by professional trainers - and then they never coached or reinforced the issues ever again. There was no way the message was ever going to stick without being reinforced. And as I watched them on the floor of their business, it was clear they had no plan for their shifts. Leaders were constantly walking by problems and not coaching up employees in the moment. It was no wonder they kept repeating the same executional mistakes as they never stopped to fix anything and never told team members where they were off standard.

Spoiler alert - once the team started coaching in the moment, everything changed.

The Checklist Lover

Another group was just the opposite - tied to standards and checklists, but without context. They flitted through their operations and checked boxes, wrote action plans, and never missed a chance to say "gotcha." The problem is that they never took the time to figure out why issues kept popping up as they spent most of their time punching their teams in the face (figuratively that is). They never took the time to find the root cause and they never checked in with the team to figure out how they could help remove obstacles or barriers. They just assumed no one wanted to do a good job and that continuously hitting them over the head with a list of out of compliance items would fix the situation.

As you might guess, until we started digging into the issues, nothing changed.

The Confusion Artist

Recently I was working in aviation and the team was confused by the leader and his approach to, well, pretty much everything. This leader had big aspirations for his team the mission of the company, but was not clear about how to get there. Team members stared at the aspirational vision statement full of trite corporate-isms without a clue in the world as to how to achieve them. It was unclear how each individual contributed to the cause, but they were told to think "holistically." The team was also flustered most days because the leader let emotion take the wheel too often and consequently you never knew which version was showing up. Would it be Captain Unobvious, Mister Corporate, or the Drama Lover? Either way, the mission was stalled.

It wasn't until we honed in on "how" each team member could contribute to the mission though a set of shared commitments that they finally started moving their customer experience vision.

Where Hospitality Breaks Down

Blame is easy, but solutions take real work. Let's talk about why some of these failures occur on the front line.

When I was a young manager, I had to work to develop these muscles. It was a hard earned lesson that what you walk past, you endorse and your team is always watching. Your example and your consistency matters.

It wasn't until I realized the power of setting a great example and being consistent about expectations that I was able to improve execution and experience.

This seems like such a basic lesson, but powerful nonetheless.

Here are some other places where breakdowns occur:

Nobody Connected the Behavior To the Execution Team members don’t underperform because they don’t care. They underperform because nobody ever drew the line from what they do to what the guest feels. Its easy to say "provide a world class guest experience." But what does that mean to a cashier on a Tuesday afternoon? Not much. But what does translate are behaviors like the greeting, the smile, and the efficient process.
The Checklist Got Promoted To Manager A checklist tells you whether something passes or fails. It cannot tell you whether it makes sense or why it is out of compliance - and checking the box fixes nothing. I have nothing against checklists, just know most get pencil-whipped (or tablet whipped) and leaders often don't dig in to see why there was a breakdown.
The Training One-and-Done Most organizations do a decent job with kick offs - it is sustaining to the average Wednesday afternoon that causes trouble. Make sure that you have a well-created development program, professional trainers, and a plan to reinforce the learning past kick off and initial training. It isn't complicated, it just means that your managers in the business have to reinforce and coach what was taught.
Leaders Managing Rather Than Coaching Managing is making sure the building runs, but coaching is making sure people develop and grow. Most leaders were promoted for the first and never taught the second, so they do what they know how to do and call it leadership. That is often a major breakdown - the new supervisor who was a great team member yesterday and today they are expected to lead. Be sure you have a team who coaches and recognizes people rather than just managing process.

Own Your Dirt

You have to lead by walking and touring, not wandering. If I see one constant out there in the service universe that spans all types of industries, it is a lack leadership presence and touring. Most leaders out there are wandering without purpose, walking past problems, and then complaining that their teams "just don't get it."

That is a fundamental breakdown in how great coaches get their team to execute - it is through repetition and a fierce belief in the basics that great leaders win.

Touring with intention looks very different than wandering aimlessly through your day.

You walk the space from the guest perspective - from the front door through the departure
You are on the lookout for inconsistencies and areas that make things hard for guests
You talk to your team about what is working, what isn't working, and what they need to do their jobs better
You engage with guests and learn their perceptions on service and how to improve
You recognize your team for the wins and coach them on the opportunities
You always have one eye on quality, another on service, and a third on the overall customer journey
You step into frontline roles to meet customers and to experience work from your team's perspective (allowing you to remove friction for them as well)

Five Moves That Get Results

1. Tour with intention, not with a clipboard. Watch for the core behaviors and processes the drive customer satisfaction.

2. Coach in the moment, not in the review. Thirty seconds on the floor beats a conversation in April. Talk to your team as close to the behavior as possible.

3. Implement micro-training. This is great fodder for pre-shift huddles or as five minute cross training activities during the shift.

4. Connect the dots on behaviors. Every team member should be able to articulate how they help customers and what their role is to driving success through their daily work.

5. Automate what you can, inspect the rest. Checklists are a means to an end and fuel execution on the daily items when used properly. But also look for ways to automate what you can, such as cooler and freezer logs in restaurants. You can also lean into digital checklists that allow for easier data aggregation and for all team members to participate in the validation. The more eyes, the better.

This is all well and good to talk about in theory, but it only works if it makes it onto the floor. As you learn to own your dirt, you'll find that your team will shift with you - albeit more slowly than you would like.

So where do you start? By starting. This is one of those processes that just requires you to get out of your office and take a walk. To start to dial your eye in and train your team to do the same.

None of us is born with this ability to walk a sales floor, a restaurant, or a showroom and just "see" things - we develop it over time with experience. Which is why, as you bring new leaders into your organization, it is on you to coach them on how to do this well. This is where new managers and supervisors need your support. It takes time, but over the years I've taken hundreds through this process and the only way it works is ongoing repetition and training. But it works and it does deliver results.

And the ultimate winner is your guest, customer, client - and your bottom line.

Tony

(Article Crafted by a human, not AI.)

Meet Tony Johnson

Tony is the Co-Managing Partner, Co-Owner, and Chief Experience Officer (CXO) for 4xi Global Consulting. He is an internationally recognized thought leader and influencer in Customer and Employee Experience. Tony hosts the wildly successful Customer Service Academy podcast and is the author of two books on leadership and CX.

Tony has worked with some of the top organizations across the globe, including Delta, 3M, Baylor Scott and White Health, University of Virginia, Siemens, SHRM, and more.

Tony is available to help your organization with:

Employee training and development
Executive and leadership coaching
CX and EX strategy creation
Inspirational keynote talks
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