Some recent research published by Zonal reported that 65% of people agree that eating and dining out is just as important in their social life as it was before the cost-of-living crisis.

If you are saying YES to something, what is it your saying NO to…. A key part of my role as a consultant is to partner with business leaders and owners to help them work through challenges to highlight the opportunities as well as helping them get clear on what this means they may need to let go. I recently read that the courage to grow demands the courage to let go…. I am often asked to support business leaders and owners who are a bit stuck on seeing the way forward and need some expert advice and support to help them generate the options and choices open to them. If you are a hospitality or retail business with a current challenge that could use the sort of skills and expertise I bring, then click here to contact me . To understand more about me and how I approach my work with clients, take a look at my recently updated website and some of the work I have completed click here .

A sign of a really great hospitality business is when it feels like a home away from home, so as we wait for the announcement from Boris this Monday, I explore what things your business needs to pay attention to as you plan to welcome your customers home.

We all have stories of truly memorable customer service that lifts your spirits and makes you want to share your experience with others. So, what is the magic dust that makes good service great and makes a satisfactory customer experience a memorable one? Knowing this answer will enable you to differentiate your business from the competition. We can all think of businesses that consistently get their customer service experience right and we reward them with our loyalty. These businesses do not have a silver bullet, so what do they have that transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary? I spent over 35 years working with businesses that deliver award winning customer service. I have had the pleasure of leading and developing the customer service strategy within Bettys for many of those years, so I am well qualified to know what it takes to achieve this. COVID-19 has made the delivery of an exceptional customer experience more important than ever, as businesses need to ensure that customers want to return and that they can build loyalty. Below I share the key things you need to do if you want to create a customer experience that is anything but ordinary. 1. Listen – creating a culture of extraordinary service requires businesses to actively listen to their front-line people and their customers. Keep close to your customers and gather data and feedback on their experience so you can continuously develop and improve it. Everyone in the team needs to be aligned to a mission based around great service and Leaders need to make it their business to remove any barriers or obstacles that get in the way. Making sure your front-line staff have the right tools and equipment to deliver great service and prioritising all the things that make great service delivery easy and inevitable. 2. Consistency is key, great service never has a day off, you need to deliver on your brand promise every time. By mapping the step by step customer journey so every member of the team knows exactly what they need to deliver for the customer to feel special and engaged. This should start from the moment customers are planning their visit through to the welcome on arrival and right through to the thank you and goodbye. A way to envisage this is to imagine your customers are taking a magic carpet ride, for them to have the full experience you need to ensure nothing is missed out so your customers can enjoy the full brand experience delivered to them by ambassadors and promoters of your brand. 3. Systems behind the service : You need to have the right processes and practices to make the delivery of exceptional service easy. This includes a clear purpose beyond making money that all the team can get behind. Having defined service values around employees’ behaviours will provide clarity on expectations so they can hold themselves and one another to account. A great Induction and onboarding process centred around your Customer Experience. Service Manuals that provide a step by step guide to support training and embed best practice. Having the right people is critical so ensuring your recruitment policy reflects the need to recruit for personality, appointing people who have a natural flair/ desire to be of service. Consider putting in place daily briefings to reinforce the mission and to set your team up for success. 4. Reward the behaviours you want to see , develop a Reward and Recognition initiative, sharing stories of great customer engagement to highlight and encourage best practice. Measure customer satisfaction in a way that allows customers to highlight great staff members and ensure leaders take time to speak to and acknowledge those mentioned. Promote the idea of lateral customer service to develop a culture of peer-based recognition allowing employees to nominate colleagues who they see go out of their way to deliver great service either internally or directly to a customer. Leaders need to role model this, taking time to acknowledge those who go out of their way to deliver exceptional service. 5. Keep raising the bar as great service never stops you need to be relentless in your pursuit of customer service excellence. Develop a culture of continuous improvement encourage ideas from the team to evolve and improve the way you do things. Get everyone in the team to ask yourselves each week what they have done to make a difference to the customer experience and share the stories. 6. Recovery Quickly: Every business gets it wrong sometimes, but customer focused ones know they need to put things right quickly and professionally. They have an excellent recovery process for complaints, and they empower their teams to do what is needed to make sure that every customer goes away delighted. They respond to complaints in a timely matter, always within 24 hours of receiving it. They track complaints and collate information so they can use this data effectively to highlight any themes and they work tirelessly to address them. Businesses with a culture of great service know happy staff mean happy customers, so they put people at the heart of everything they do. They invest in their people, seeing value in training and developing their teams so they can be the best they can be. They know customers value the opportunity to build rapport and relationship, creating a loyal and engaged team provides stability and tenure means staff can get to know their customers, their likes and dislikes, allowing them to anticipate their needs and build strong relationships. They never adopt hard selling techniques as the quality of their products and service means they don’t need to as employees feel proud to share knowledge and assist customers in navigating the menu without feeling the pressure to directly sell. Great service is all about making the process as easy and enjoyable as you can for your customer. Great service is seamless every element creates a chain reaction that delights customers it builds trust and makes the customer feel special and looked after. Businesses with a great service culture create a loyal customer base by building strong and authentic relationships. Their customers and staff become their ambassadors and promoters by sharing the experience with other. A positive legacy of the pandemic is that customers will be seeking out businesses that provide an experience that engages with them on an emotional level, lifting spirits and creating happiness. If want to know how you take your customer experience to a new level contact me at enquires@boost-consultancy.co.uk or call me on 07595 278159 as I would love to help.

I love the feeling you get when your actions and contributions make a tangible difference to someone or something.

Using this 3-step approach can help to foster a positive mindset in the most difficult of times: 1. IT IS WHAT IT IS ACCEPT IT (it will either control you or you will control it) 2. HARVEST THE GOOD (there’s good in everything seek and you will find!) 3. FORGIVE THE REST (this means let it go completely, release it)

They say fortune favours the bold, these times call for leaders to think of differently to find innovative solutions and embrace new opportunities to drive the success of their business. One CEO recently spoke about how Covid had allowed them to line up and shoot the sacred cows that had previously restricted or governed their way of thinking and stifled creativity.

Some operators plan to extend the Eat Out to Help Out scheme into September using this as a way to reward customers and provide an incentive for them to go out Monday to Wednesday. We know too well the impact continual discounting can have on the perceived value of a brand and how difficult it can be to ween people off such discounts. So how do you create new reasons for customers to continue to help out by coming out to dine with you? Boost consultancy explores some alternative ways to help restaurants remain busy off-peak during September and October.

Boost Consultancy Ltd is piloting a radical approach to engage new customers. Disrupting the conventional approach to pricing the founder Paula Kaye is taking a participative pricing strategy offering clients the ability to Pay-What- They-Want based on their satisfaction with the work she delivers for August and September. A moment of madness or the kind of innovative thinking needed for these very different times. There are not many who would have the confidence to lay their work on the line in this way.