How to customise a guest experience yet keep your service standardised?

Having standardised service does not exclude customisation, in fact, it enables it.

Once you have well established systems in place to always deliver hitting the standards you set, that is the moment when you can provide special experience to your guests, what I call going above and beyond moments.

Balance is the key for many things in life so it is here. What you really need to balance here is not going per protocol and still surprising your guest but rather all your stakeholders that contribute to this balance. These are your guests, you as a company and you as an owner and your employees. All these relations between will enable coherent standardisation and custimisation.

This is how I see it.

Moral of the story: Standardisation is like the level of your practice. Customisation is like the level of your potential. You need both because when you fail to deliver the way you planned, you will fall to the level of your practice, but when you find time and effort to overdeliver, you will rise to the level of your potential.

Sweet spot of guests

Merging the standardisation and customisation does not have to be difficult and it is definitely one of the most important if not the most important thing on the list for your guest. Except this is the backend problem and your guests don't see it this way, but they do feel it, trust me.

Standardisation will produce feeling of trust in guests and being taken care of.

For your hotel, this means consistency in service and offer. In order to make this machine running you need systems that will be enablers for easy going standardised service such as room service check lists, onboarding experience protocols etc.

On the other hand, guests love to feel special and surprised, impressed and this is customisation.

This is totally dependent on you, your brand's story and company values, and it can go in many directions but the ways you choose to show customisation in practice, should be aligned with your concept. You can literally make them feel important and do many small surprises and provide them with extra things or you can make the things they already plan to do easier and better; you can be thinking for them or one step ahead of them and prepare for their daily routine. These are totally different approaches but all make your guests feel heard and worthy.

Sweet spot of company

It is lots of work in the beginning to create all the systems to support the standardisation. It is not easy to make all the standards and protocols, it requires many trial-and-errors and in fact it always will. It is 24/7 quality system setup. However, this is a game changer. This is how you can control the knowledge and that know-how of yours. This is how you can indoctrinate all your new employees and make sure the system does not suffer when someone leaves.

Standardisation will make everything in your company easier.

The thing that is interesting for small hotel owners to mention is how this can influence them. Systems can make you feel not important anymore. This whole automation brings relief that you might not be prepared for. You are building the structure that can work impeccable without you having to intervene. You are training your employees to make decisions that otherwise you would be asked to approve. Listen, this is fine and this is normal, also this is fantastic. There is a part of job that is much more important that no one can do, except you. But you can only focus on it after you build the sustainable system for lower level decisions to be delegated.

More standardised processes mean less mistakes, less decisions to be made, less energy and time wasted, less needless questions. On the other side, it also means less creativity, communication and dynamics, happenings and fun in general. This is exactly what customisation brings and makes up for.

Customisation will serve as a tool to engage employees and constantly improve standards.

Once done, standardisation will make results but it is customisation that updates all the protocols regularly so that everything can stay easy and lean while targeting the new ways of serving guest's needs. Your frontend people are the ones to bring these insights so make sure you emphasise this meaningful role to them.

Sweet spot of employees

Less creativity, communication and dynamics have mostly negative influence on employees.

People seek for fun, love to connect and more dynamics means more awareness.

So removing these while implementing standardisation does not sound that good.

But you remember the balance from the beginning...

When there is no standardisation, people experience more freedom but system enters chaos.

Standardisation brings more clarity about job in general which in return allows for freedom in some way and this can be directed towards customisation.

Your employee will appreciate calm workplace and clear accountability, but it is your job not to forget about encouraging their individuality and resourcefulness towards customisation. You may have great customisation ideas especially when it comes to using your guest database, but eventually it is on an employee to create those special moments when they witness the specific situation.

Pivoting the procedures and bringing new views is important for continual improvement and following the life on site.

You should keep your company lively and your team involved and inspired to share and think about new potential directions for whole company. Organise regular meetings and truly take into account every suggestion, encourage sharing experiences and new perspectives on current systems, because the successful business, especially the one in hospitality, is ever changing and growing together with its customers.

I invite you to share your business wisdom! Tell us, how often do you have meeting with your operations departments? Comment bellow.

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