<p>In most service businesses, the customer relationship does not reside in the loyalty programme. It resides in a person. Usually, that person is not the CEO, nor even the well-spoken manager at the front desk. It is often someone older, less celebrated and more deeply embedded in the daily routine of service – the senior captain in a restaurant, the service adviser at a car dealership who has handled the same customer’s complaints for years, or the field engineer in a company who knows exactly which machine will fail if the customer’s maintenance team is under pressure. </p><p>Your columnist has learnt this not from a textbook, but from years spent living out of hotels. Over the last three decades, he has travelled for a large part of each month, often spending between ten and fifteen nights in hotels. Mercifully, over time, he has found a handful of properties that have adapted themselves to his eccentricities. While he is not a trained hotelier, despite serving on the board of a fairly large hotel company, he understands something about what makes service work. It is not marble flooring or brand promises. These things help, but people carry the relationships. At a good hotel, the most valuable person is often the senior captain. He is not simply a waiter with a better title. He is part host and part psychologist. He remembers who dislikes being fussed over and who wants his coffee strong. He knows which guest’s tantrum will pass if handled with dignity. In the hotel trade, where emotions travel fast, where fatigue, jet lag and entitlement can collide spectacularly, such people are invaluable. </p><p>The Oberoi Bombay, a home of sorts for your columnist, has given him many such relationships over the years. He has watched young entrants mature into seasoned professionals and seasoned professionals retire after decades of service at the bell desk or food and beverage outlets. To the balance sheet, these people appear as employees. To the customer, <em>they</em> are the institution. They are the reason arrival feels less like a transaction and more like a return. They reduce the burden of travel because they remove uncertainty. There is a body of management research that supports this instinct. The “service profit chain”, developed by James Heskett, W Earl Sasser and their colleagues, argued in the Harvard Business Review that profit and growth are strongly linked to customer loyalty, which in turn is shaped by employee capability. In service firms, frontline employees and customers should sit at the centre of management concern, not at the periphery. </p><p>Hotels understand this better than most businesses, but not always well enough. The global hotel industry has invested excessively in design, technology and loyalty programmes, yet the most powerful loyalty programme remains the employee who knows the guest before the screen loads. The same principle applies far beyond hotels. In a bank, the repository of trust may be the branch manager or relationship officer who has seen a family through school fees and property purchases. In an airline, it may be the ground supervisor who knows how to rescue a missed connection, in a luxury store, it may be the sales associate who understands that the customer is buying not only a handbag, but recognition. In each case, the institution speaks through an individual. Manufacturing companies sometimes imagine that they are exempt from this rule because they sell products, not experiences. This is an illusion. In business-to-business markets, the customer relationship often rests with people far from corporate headquarters, like the sales engineer or the plant service technician. These are the people who know the customer’s line stoppages and technical anxieties. The uncomfortable truth is that such people are often underpaid and over-managed. In many organisations, customer memory dies not with a system failure, but with a farewell cake. In the end, a good hotel is not merely a place that gives you a room. It is a place where someone looks up and says, “Welcome home,” and means it. That sentence, delivered by the right person, is not merely courtesy. It is also strategy. </p>
<p>In most service businesses, the customer relationship does not reside in the loyalty programme. It resides in a person. Usually, that person is not the CEO, nor even the well-spoken manager at the front desk. It is often someone older, less celebrated and more deeply embedded in the daily routine of service – the senior captain in a restaurant, the service adviser at a car dealership who has handled the same customer’s complaints for years, or the field engineer in a company who knows exactly which machine will fail if the customer’s maintenance team is under pressure. </p><p>Your columnist has learnt this not from a textbook, but from years spent living out of hotels. Over the last three decades, he has travelled for a large part of each month, often spending between ten and fifteen nights in hotels. Mercifully, over time, he has found a handful of properties that have adapted themselves to his eccentricities. While he is not a trained hotelier, despite serving on the board of a fairly large hotel company, he understands something about what makes service work. It is not marble flooring or brand promises. These things help, but people carry the relationships. At a good hotel, the most valuable person is often the senior captain. He is not simply a waiter with a better title. He is part host and part psychologist. He remembers who dislikes being fussed over and who wants his coffee strong. He knows which guest’s tantrum will pass if handled with dignity. In the hotel trade, where emotions travel fast, where fatigue, jet lag and entitlement can collide spectacularly, such people are invaluable. </p><p>The Oberoi Bombay, a home of sorts for your columnist, has given him many such relationships over the years. He has watched young entrants mature into seasoned professionals and seasoned professionals retire after decades of service at the bell desk or food and beverage outlets. To the balance sheet, these people appear as employees. To the customer, <em>they</em> are the institution. They are the reason arrival feels less like a transaction and more like a return. They reduce the burden of travel because they remove uncertainty. There is a body of management research that supports this instinct. The “service profit chain”, developed by James Heskett, W Earl Sasser and their colleagues, argued in the Harvard Business Review that profit and growth are strongly linked to customer loyalty, which in turn is shaped by employee capability. In service firms, frontline employees and customers should sit at the centre of management concern, not at the periphery. </p><p>Hotels understand this better than most businesses, but not always well enough. The global hotel industry has invested excessively in design, technology and loyalty programmes, yet the most powerful loyalty programme remains the employee who knows the guest before the screen loads. The same principle applies far beyond hotels. In a bank, the repository of trust may be the branch manager or relationship officer who has seen a family through school fees and property purchases. In an airline, it may be the ground supervisor who knows how to rescue a missed connection, in a luxury store, it may be the sales associate who understands that the customer is buying not only a handbag, but recognition. In each case, the institution speaks through an individual. Manufacturing companies sometimes imagine that they are exempt from this rule because they sell products, not experiences. This is an illusion. In business-to-business markets, the customer relationship often rests with people far from corporate headquarters, like the sales engineer or the plant service technician. These are the people who know the customer’s line stoppages and technical anxieties. The uncomfortable truth is that such people are often underpaid and over-managed. In many organisations, customer memory dies not with a system failure, but with a farewell cake. In the end, a good hotel is not merely a place that gives you a room. It is a place where someone looks up and says, “Welcome home,” and means it. That sentence, delivered by the right person, is not merely courtesy. It is also strategy. </p>
