The Heart of Hospitality

For all of the best intentions that most of us start out with in our businesses, it’s nearly inevitable that a high level of caring about the customer slips when customer numbers increase. And this loss directly sabotages the future growth of your company. The way to prevent too much slippage in standards is to be determined that you and your organization maintain the mindset that “If we did it right for our first guest, we’ll find a way to keep doing it for our millionth, one on one, without rushing or cutting corners.”
The BUBL method of serving customers: An important concept is that every guest is surrounded by an individual, invisible protective bubble. Your team needs to learn to recognize when it’s okay to venture into the customer’s protective bubble—and how to interact with the customer while that bubble is open. The BUBL method suggests the following:
Begin immediately to have the interaction when the occasion arises.
Un-code (decode) the guest’s messages and pacing.
Break your schedule—be flexible and take advantage of opportunities for interaction.
Leave room for additional interaction before

Great hospitality must be focused on one guest at a time. For the moments that you are together, treat every guest as if she were the only customer in the world

At Le Bernardin, “It’s our responsibility to understand the need of the guest, to deliver an experience that’s individually crafted for each individual in the dining room.”

treat each customer like the last customer on earth”

what’s most important isn’t so much to put on an all-star show for your guests (though that can be great as well) as it is to create and maintain the illusion that you are always there awaiting your guest, attending to her as if you had nothing else on your agenda that could possibly interfere. Pull this off and you’re well on your way to guaranteeing yourself a guest for life.

small touches that are directly focused on the goal of making every guest feel special: custom candy bars and water bottles with the guest’s name on it, for example, as well as welcome letters that are customized for each guest.

If we did it for our first guest, we’ll find a way to keep doing it for our millionth, without rushing or cutting corners, without doing anything that would make that guest feel any less than fully valued in our eyes.

The heart of hospitality, for me, is the ability to focus completely and totally on one person, even if only for a matter of seconds, yet long enough that you’ve got a clear connection, a channel between the two of you. It’s the ability to focus so intently on a guest that the rest of the world ceases to exist. It might sound, as I tell you this, that this type of focus takes a lot of time, but it doesn’t; it just requires your full and complete attention at a given moment. You have to develop the discipline of momentarily blotting out the rest of the world. Believe me: your guest will know immediately when you’ve succeeded.

Customers are always giving you cues that are specific to that customer, and you have to be paying attention, every single time. Customers want you to be a “participant observer,” someone who will share the experience with them. They want someone else to know the significance of the experience. They’re often looking for someone with whom they can faithfully share information, and if they ever sense that you’re uninterested or too busy, they won’t.

today’s world, if you think about it, we’re often so fractured and distracted that we barely even make eye contact with people. Now, if you have a puppy, everybody’s going to make eye contact with the little puppy and light up and be intrigued, but when encountering another human being, sometimes we have a tendency, from shyness, weariness, who knows, to do the opposite and blot them out. But what could possibly be more important than the person standing in front of you?”