WITHOUT TROUBLE THERE IS NO TRIUMPH.

Nobody wishes for disaster but it is often only at those times when you find out what people are really like.  I have a half a dozen hilarious stories about Southwest Airlines each the result of some unexpected mishap.

When I went to work for the Coeur d’Alene Resort developing their new employee Service Camp™.  We were a brand new $60 Million hotel in a town of just 25,000 people who most people never heard about and certainly couldn’t spell.  The challenge was, because of the northern location just an hour east of Spokane Washington, that our prime season was only a few months long.  We had to hire and train 300 new employees in a matter of weeks to serve customers who were accustomed to Five Star service.  Most of these new team members had never heard of, much less experienced, this level of service so we knew we would make mistakes and probably lots of them. 

The problem is not the errors themselves but when we make a “mistake” we are hard wired to go into stress mode, which anybody who has ever been asked to unexpectedly speak in public knows, shuts down our ability to even remember our own names. 

The key was not just learning from the problem so we could fix the systems for the future but changing the mistake mindset from “Oh NO” to “now we shine“.  Our service level was designed around giving people the freedom, resources and most importantly the emotional energy to get excited about recovery instead of depressed about the discourse.

FIX PEOPLE FIRST, THEN FIX THE PROBLEM.  This is true for both guests and employees and the most important of these two are the employees.  We condition fearless children to be fear-full adults and changing that conditioning takes lots of work.

To do this effectively you will have to cast a wide net.  Catch people when they do it right, when they recover, innovate, assist a coworker or fail fabulously in the effort.

Simple steps for employees.

1-Respond quickly.  Problems expand in direct proportion to the amount of time it takes to resolve them.

2-Apologize profusely, whether it is your fault or not.  Never blame another person, department, system and especially never the customer.

3-Apologies are not intellectual, they are also not largely verbal.  Eye contact, proximity, attention, cadence are all important.  Mirroring the disappointed person’s style and even their exact language is very helpful.

4-Arm them with a magic phrase.   This needs to start as a script so the employee has something “super learned” that they can rely on when the rest of their brain shuts down. 

5-Remember fear turns us from responsive adults to reactive reptiles.  This is not a choice.  This is an evolutionary adaptation.  Logic is no match for emotion.

6-Magic script (after apology).  “My job is to add value to “the balance of your stay in such a way as to overcompensate for the dis-service we have provided.  Replace “balance of your stay” with whatever experience your customer was expecting and did not get.

7-Five Whys.   There are many, many things you can do that cost the company very little that demonstrate caring.  I describe this as symbolic atonement.  You may not be able to fix what happened but you can always show you care.  This has been shown to be effective in everything from hospitality to healthcare.

8-Add a Surprise.   Turn customers into advocates by adding a little something extra.  Whatever you learn that you can do to “break even” add one.  DON’T EVER just “even the score” always strive to create s story. 

9-Everybody Sells.  This is your greatest marketing opportunity of all.  Make your recovery so impressive that the customer will tell ALL their friends. 

10-Un-do the fear of failure.  It is important for the customer to add to your word of mouth sales but most importantly it is invaluable for the employee because they will gradually, little by little lose their fear of making a mistake.  Then when something does go wrong they won’t automatically devolve into an unresponsive amoeba.

11-Tell the story to absolutely everyone.  Bad news travels easily but good news takes work.  Make sure everyone hears the story about what went wrong and then before sharing the solution ask what they would do.  TELLING IS A TERRIBLE WAY OF TEACHING.  Asking involves, telling turns off. 

12-THE BIGGEST PROBLEM Won’t be the guests, employees or even systems but managers.  In-Affective managers assign blame, make criticisms personal and fail to look for the underlying systemic problems.  Take a tip from Sakichi Toyoda and applied by The Ritz Carlton.  “Ask Why Five Times”.  This is not a form of interrogation but joint investigation.  The underlying message is “What did we do wrong as an organization that put you (the employee) in this position.  It may turn out your systems are perfect and you have the wrong employee or that person was just having a bad day or even that the customer is not a good fit for your service.  There are guests I have invited to enjoy their hospitality elsewhere but that is in the extreme.  EVERYONE deserves the opportunity to have a bad day.