It always amazes me how few places ask for feedback, almost no one does. And when they do, it’s usually just marking out of ten or circling a degree of smiley or sad faces which is next to useless. Maybe people don’t like to ask because they don’t want to hear the answer!
Some of you may remember the Victoria Wood sketch where a couple were eating a meal. Wife says to husband something like “I simply can’t eat this Ken”. The waiter comes up and says “Is everything ok with your meal?” and she answers “Yes, it’s lovely thanks!”.
This demonstrates how a lot of guests are, many times an accommodation provider won’t even bother to ask if you had a nice stay, but if they do, the answer is often yes even when it’s a no.
How many times have you read an online review for a hotel or restaurant which has a long list of complaints, yet the response from management is “If you’d have said something about it at the time we could have done something about it”.
I do agree on the one hand that it’s unfair to review or judge a place when you haven’t highlighted that there’s a problem. Often it’s impossible for someone else to tell there’s an issue unless you point it out. If your food is not hot enough, the waiter won’t know this unless he stuck his fingers in it on the way to the table. If you’re too cold sitting in your hotel room and need an extra heater, the receptionist won’t know unless she’s decided to sit and do her work in your room with you.
So – yes you have to say something – but you have to feel like you can say something. An atmosphere has to be created whereby they feel able to speak out.
You need to offer a variety of ways for guests to communicate feedback to you as different people will feel more comfortable with a particular medium. Some people are quite happy to be outspoken and tell you exactly how they feel. Others would be happy to fill in a form in their bedroom but wouldn’t necessarily say the same to your face. Others might fill in an anonymous form on the internet as long as there were no personal identifiers.
The more you can encourage feedback the better. Not only does this help you improve your customer experience and assist with continual improvement, but it also avoids guests leaving you unhappy and then slating you online.
I’d like to think that we’re friendly chaps and easy to approach, so most people would tell us if there was an issue at our B&B. We also had a feedback form in the bedrooms on the back of the welcome letter from day one. Even after over 15 years we still felt we gained benefit from them, although less so than we did in the early days.
Feedback forms are often useful if the guest trusts that management are going to read it. They may feel it’s not worth bringing up an issue with a receptionist when they check out as they don’t know if it will ever be fed back to the appropriate department manager. The smaller the accommodation establishment and the more hands on the owners, the easier it is to get face to face feedback.
Most people don’t like conflict so they’re not likely to raise an issue if they think they will be put down, shouted at, made to look stupid or ridiculed for their opinion.
I suppose another reason could be that people think it won’t make any difference. If they think their complaint will just be filed in the bin then what’s the point? Customers have to feel like they will be listened to, receive empathy and then action will actually be taken as a result.
Often they may have had a bad experience of giving feedback and so not wish to be in the same situation again. Sometimes, it’s easier to let something go than be bothered to do something about it. We would always encourage our guests to speak out – if we don’t know the kettle keeps cutting out or a handle is loose then we won’t be able to fix them.
When you clean the bedrooms, it’s impossible to test absolutely everything and guests may only spot some issues when using the room – for instance sitting in the bath you then notice a dusty pipe under the sink - so it’s really useful to hear about these things. I’d much rather one guest spot something, tell us, then we put it right immediately so it doesn’t affect other future guests. If you create an environment where you don’t get feedback as readily, there could be scores of guests who see your lack of dusting.
Feedback is important, I think most people would agree with that. But you need to encourage it and be open to it to be truly successful. Making sure guests feel comfortable and at home is therefore very important. Make sure you offer different ways to give it, and feedback to them too with a thank you and acknowledgment.
If you’d like some help creating a feedback form or looking at your feedback processes then give me a shout. info@NeonDuck.co.uk
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