Setting new standards to face the future, together
Sometimes, when we hear the weary lament "things ain't what they used to be", we want to reply: "You're right - they're getting better." Such is the case with customer service.
You will always hear horror stories about low standards and the appalling way in which a friend-of-a-friend's neighbour has been treated by the local council/electricity board/bus company/doctor's surgery. But, by and large, these tales are becoming relics of the past, or may have more to do with prejudice than reality.
During the commercial boom before the last recession, in the me-first, get-ahead 1980s, companies in service industries and in manufacturing began to treat their customers to a cavalier, like-it-or-lump-it approach. Success can sometimes breed complacency, and complacency breeds contempt.
When profits started to slump, however, attitudes began to change. In a more competitive environment, a new set of values emerged that emphasised the importance of customers as people. It started in manufacturing and the retail trade, where industrialists created teams of "preferred suppliers" and sales staff were exposed to communication training. Inevitably, the process of change spread to the service industries. High-street banks were opened up; power companies allowed customers to negotiate deals; and the NHS issued a Patients' Charter.
Although the industry most concerned with treating its customers with respect has been slow to pick up the banner, hospitality is now beginning to face up to the challenge, and credit must go to those organisations such as the HCIMA that are taking initiatives to review and improve standards.
The HCIMA is not suggesting that customers are being badly treated across the board (although concerns about low standards in some areas apparently created the need for action in the first place). What the HCIMA is doing is providing a structured approach for companies to ask the question: "how good are we?"
It is a commendable initiative, and it is important that HCIMA central office is not left to fight alone. The association's membership has to participate, but, more than that, the industry at large should rally to the cause.
Other organisations are working to raise standards in similar and related areas - the British Hospitality Association and the Hospitality Training Foundation, to name but two - and communication between all parties must be encouraged.
The raising of standards, particularly those that affect customers directly, is one area where the industry should unite and face the future with one voice. There are other areas, of course, but this would be a start. Sometimes it's exciting that things ain't what they used to be.
FORBES MUTCH
Editor,
Caterer & Hotelkeeper
