Processes and procedures are important when it comes to GREAT customer service. It is the experience the customer has with you that brings them back again and again. The way your team works is what will make or break your business in the hospitality industry. We know that every restaurant and hotel bleeds margin and efficiency. Without proper processes and procedures in place, your're just like your competition. Restaurants and hotels grow and develop in an ongoing process, just like trainees - and there is always room for improvement.
When it comes to customer service training, many restaurants and hotels make a huge mistake of not investing in proper development of their employees, thinking it will be an easy way to save money and time. In reality, this misconception leads to significantly higher costs in lost revenue due to lost customers, not to mention employee turnover. Think of the expense of customer acquisition or the cost of employee replacement. The estimated cost of recovery of "lost souls" (customers) is $750. The average cost of employee hiring and training of a line-level employee is $2,000. The sad thing is that both the customers and the employees were the businesses, to begin with, and the proper training, particularly exceptional customer service training were not in place. Therefore, the culture of providing customers an outstanding experience never really existed. If you invested into developing any of your departments in your operation to it's full potential, it would produce huge returns to your bottom line.
Having strong customer experience processes and procedures is the major difference for most successful companies in the world. They carry huge amounts on their balance sheets for brand identification. These companies are making hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of reinvestments into their customer service internal processes and procedures, and understand the increased value those investments return. Development may seem expensive and optional, but not investing in these efforts is even more costly.