By Nick Clarke of HOP Training

Traditionally in hospitality, the focus has been far too much on the guest experience and not enough on the team. The dogma that comes with phrases like “the customer is always right”, “the customer is king”, or even the idea of calling team members “servers” creates this sense that the guest is superior and the team is inferior. Chuck British class dynamics into the mix, and you’ve got a real problem.

This status imbalance, combined with a lack of autonomy, is at the heart of some of the biggest issues we face in our industry today. There are still many restaurants that desperately cling to these principles. Keeping their teams on a tight script, telling them how to stand and never allowing them to deviate from their 200 steps of service. Yes, it creates a consistent experience, but it also makes for one that’s pretty dull for everyone involved.

Nick is here to help us fix that problem. After working in Hospitality for over 20 years he founded Hop Training ten years ago out of frustration with how Hospitality was viewed and trained in the UK. In this piece he’ll be detailing how to prioritise yourself and your staff so that you’re centring authenticity to create a truly great experience for both your customer and your teams.

From the outside, the core of what we do at Hop is about creating better guest experiences. But I firmly believe you can’t have a great guest experience without a great team experience. Leaning on Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, what we’re actually about is creating peak experiences for both the guest and the team. If the team feels confident, relaxed and has autonomy and skill in what they do, the guest experience will take care of itself.

The customer is not king, they’re certainly not always right, and we are not here to serve them. We’re here to facilitate a great experience. And a peak experience is a two-way street. We both have an equal stake in it, which means we must be on a level with the guest. Not beneath, not above them, right there with them.

The culture of the business plays a huge part in this, but for this article, I want to look at what we can do individually to put us on equal footing when interacting with guests. Here are six ways to be more relaxed, more authentic and ultimately give you more status when interacting with guests.

Know your systems and product

This is what Danny Meyer would refer to as service-based skills: the non-emotional practical skills or knowledge you need for your specific job role. I like to think of the service-based skillset as the foundation of calm, confident teams. You’ve got to think about where the cracks are in that foundation and work hard on filling them, not necessarily for the guest experience but for your own experience. If you have a guest who’s being quite direct asking you about the details of a particular dish and your service-based knowledge isn’t great, I can guarantee that your heart rate will rise, your voice will change, and the information you give won’t be of any actual use to the guest. You might turn to something scripted like, “it’s really good” or “it’s very popular”.

I am text block. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dHowever, if we have in-depth knowledge of the dish, the ingredients, the suppliers and how it’s cooked, we’ll be so much more relaxed and comfortable talking to this potentially tricky guest. I’m not saying we bore them to death with how the Mackerel is hand caught in Iceland, but we can choose the right amount of information to give to them at that moment. The pieces that will create the best experience for them and for us. And because we’ve got such in-depth service-based knowledge, we’re delivering that information in a much more comfortable and relaxed way, which in turn, gives us more status.apibus leo.

Use your own voice

No matter where you’re from, how you sound, whatever accent you have, I want you to use your own voice with guests. So many team members feel they must use a different voice at work—a “service voice”, as we call it. ‘Service voices’ are usually more nasal, high pitched and accompanied with a script, “Hi Guys, what can I get you” or “Good evening, sir, welcome, right this way”. Yes, ‘service Voices’ are very inoffensive, but my god, they are so easy to ignore, and instantly lower your status.

There is no voice you can put on that’s more engaging, easier to listen to or more full of nuance and emotion than your own natural voice. We lose so much of that once we go up into the nasal service voice. Everything just sounds the same. We become generic, and generic doesn’t give you status. Embrace your voice, it’s uniquely yours and far more interesting than any voice you could ever “put on”.

Drop the Filler Words

Filler words are words we drop into conversations with guests that don’t really have any meaning. Here are some common ones: “amazing”, “wonderful”, “absolutely”, “no worries”, “yea, yea, yea”, “sure, sure, sure”, “of course”, “certainly”, “cool, cool, cool”.

These “filler words” get dropped into conversations repeatedly. We use them to signify to guests that we’re listening – ironically, without actually listening. It’s like we’re scared of any silence between ourselves and the guest, so we cram every space with noise. This stops us from truly listening to the guest and makes the guest feel hurried; each “absolutely” becomes a subtle hurry up; I want to get away from this table, which in turn lowers our status.

People always say, “But if I don’t use filler words, what will I say? How will the guest know I’m listening?” You don’t need to replace filler words with anything. Think of the famous Miles Davis quote, “Music is the space between the notes”. It’s the same here; the magic is in the space. Just listen; if you’re genuinely listening, you’ll be giving many facial cues that you’re engaged, and you won’t need the filler words. Having the confidence to listen and allow space instantly raises your status, and you’re much more likely to build a genuine connection with the guest.

Get off script

If you’ve been working in Hospitality for any length of time, you’ve likely got a script you use with guests. We get so good at using these scripts that we can do it without thinking. “Hi Guys, how you doing, have you been here before?” It’s so easy to say the words without meaning because we’re not engaged mentally. Notice that in the example above I asked the guest how they were doing but then immediately asked if they had been here before. I didn’t give them a chance to answer the first question before I asked the next. That indicates that I don’t really care about how they’re doing, and that it’s an empty question. It’s just my segway to get to the order.

Instead of using a script (which feels safe, I know), focus on how you want the guest to feel. For example, I might focus on making the guest feel relaxed and go over to say “Hi, how’s it going?” or I might simply say “Hello” and wait. But because my words are intentional, because I am mentally engaged, the guest is far more likely to respond and respond genuinely. Suddenly the communication is meaningful and reciprocal, rather than made up of empty scripted words.

Know when to slow down

I’m a naturally quick talker, and there’s nothing wrong with speaking fast naturally, but that means that I also want to put extra emphasis on being clear. You need to have the ability to be able to slow down when required. It’s a skill you should have in your locker. If it’s a busy shift and things are getting a bit stressful, we want to avoid taking that energy over to the table. So just being able to slow down the pace of our speech is vital in stressful moments or when dealing with complaints or tricky guests. Practice combining a slow pace, soft tone and good volume with certain guests – especially ones who you find don’t want to listen to you. It’s not that they don’t want to listen, it’s that generally, people are pretty lazy, and if they have to make an effort to listen to you, they switch off, to make it easier for them by softening and slowing. Having the ability to slow down up’s your status, especially in stressful times.

Become an adaptive expert

The terms routine and adaptive expertise were originally coined by Giyoo Hatano and Kayoko Inagaki. I see a lot of “routine experts” in our industry. This is where we get so good at something we can do it on repeat without thinking. It’s efficient, it works, but it’s robotic. For some things, that’s great; doing a stock take, polishing cutlery or deep cleaning the freezer. But when it comes to interacting with guests, being a routine expert is so boring for not just the guest but for us, too.

Instead, become an adaptive expert in the way you engage your guests. An adaptive expert takes that extra brain power and is always looking for the adaptations they can make on the fly to improve the experience for themselves and the guest. By being adaptive, we naturally become more present and empowered and feel more masterful in how we work. All of which gives us natural, effortless status. After all, anyone who’s truly masterful in what they do has nothing to prove and feels they can be their true, authentic self in front of anyone.

Finally, it’s about realising how skilful we can be in our role. If you’re working in a busy restaurant, you’ll speak to around 300-400 people every week. Our job is to be able to truly understand each guest; their mood, energy, emotional state, fears, and stresses; and to be able to decode all of that in seconds to build meaningful connections with them. To create a peak experience, time and time again. If you can do that with every guest, no matter where they’re from, how they’re dressed, or how they sound or look, it means you’re becoming truly masterful in the way you communicate – that’s something worth taking pride in. Because there are not many people in this world who can communicate with that level of skill. The best people in our industry are some of the best communicators on the planet, and there’s no reason why we can’t all be that good at what we do. 

Nick’s worked with a wide range of Hospitality brands, including Hawksmoor, Fortnum & Mason, KILN, Brat, Mountain, Flat Iron, Wahaca, Wagamama, Trullo, Padella, Polpo, Ennismore, Smoking Goat, Belmond Hotels, Hampton Manor, Pizza Pilgrims & Marugal Hotels.

“I would endlessly listen to managers, business owners, and shareholders talk about “Wowing Guests,” “Going the extra mile,” or “Making every guest happy”. Clichéd, generalised advice that had no practical use on the floor. It felt similar to coaching a football team by telling them to “score more goals” every week but with no practical coaching on how to do it. As an industry, it felt like we were setting teams up for failure. Fundamentally I believe that Hospitality is a skill; one that transcends restaurants, bars or hotels. It’s the art of being in the present and having the skill to bring those around you into the present moment with you. At Hop, we’re on a mission to build a better Hospitality industry where teams feel a true sense of value and worth in the work they do”.