service & hospitality - is there a difference?
yes there is but they rely heavily on each other
Service and hospitality are different concepts but they have to be weaved together intentionally to create magical experiences for your team and guests.
No matter the industry or business that you are in, you are likely offering a service of some kind, or you are in service to others. If you are the owner or operator of a business, you are in service to your team, guests, customers, vendors and community.
Service is a hard skill that follows a structure. It creates consistency, accountability and gets everyone to the same baseline. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are created to define the type and steps of service that you are providing.
Let’s dive a little deeper into where service is integrated into your culture and business that you may not realize it.
From the moment you start the hiring process, you are providing service. You may have an organizational chart with whom is responsible for the hiring in your organization. You also likely have a process that a candidate has to go through to decide if they are the right fit for your team. There are certain steps of service or SOPs that are followed so the interviewers are equipped and prepared with the resources to feel confident in the conversations and decide on if this person may be a great addition or not to your team.
Onboarding! This step gets missed too often.
Onboarding is crucial and the service structure has to be defined in great detail to guarantee that your team and the new hire feels confident about all the information that is being shared. This is your only opportunity to introduce them to your business, culture and team. You can compare onboarding to the “welcome experience” for a guest - that moment they first interact with your establishment, whether that be with a reservationist, a host or a bartender. With annual turnover rates between 70-80% in the hospitality industry, investing time and energy into defining the SOPs for onboarding and welcoming new candidates to the team is your prerogative. It reduces your training costs and time wasted - your most valuable asset.
Creating the steps of service for each of these areas will bring structure and guidelines that you and your teams need to be consistent, collaborative, and confident - all together.
Hospitality is a soft skill that can be taught. It encourages you to be forever curious, fine tune your active listening, attention to detail, and allows your creativity to come alive! Hospitality is defined differently by every person and business. However, it’s always set at a baseline of taking care of yourself and others. So do you teach your team to integrate it?
Hospitality allows you to create an experience for people - whether that’s yourself, your team or your guests / customers.
Here are 4 tips to use when defining what hospitality means to your business and how to integrate it.
1- align the experiences that you want to create with the company values, ethos and ethics.
2 - how do you want your team and guests to feel when they are in your space, interacting with the culture you have created and the business you have built? get really clear on how you want all the senses to be activated. **don’t think about this from an inward lens because each of us wants to be cared for in different ways - look at the sentiment that you want anyone that interacts with your team and business to feel.
3 - share examples of how you and your team can use the available resources to do so. **some examples are handwritten notes, active listening to bring someone their favorite coffee, snack or dish, sharing a quote that pre-shift, asking your people how you can support them.
4 - celebrate the moments that you know your team has integrated hospitality! open up the conversation for them to share moments with everyone, examples help everyone understand how they can bring their own creativity to the table to integrate hospitality.
Hospitality is not only dedicated to the “hospitality industry”. It is of course at the core of what we do for others, but I remind you to turn that lens inwards - whether for yourself or to your team. Before you create beautiful experiences for your guests - that give them no other option but to return - make sure you are giving it to your team. They need to be cared for first, they need to feel it first, they need the structure of service to understand how to deliver hospitality.
When you have full buy in, you reduce your turnover, evolve the culture into a fun and safe place to work - this is a legacy you want to be known for!