The Guest Philosophy of Customer Experience

During times of poor demands, companies tend to cut costs in labour, staff training, capital investment, and marketing.  Such measures may work in the business ecosystem but not in the present customer ecosystem. In the customer ecosystem, such measures are viewed to be short-sighted and have little impact on business sustainability. Instead, organisations should take the opportunity to invest in engaging their customers by treating them as guests. This is one of the key success factors of great service organisations like Ritz Carlton and Walt Disney. To treat the customers as guests involves learning and practising the "Guest” philosophy, a set of principles for delivering the extraordinary guest experience.

Generosity in Hospitality

According to Answers.com, a guest is someone who is a recipient of hospitality at the home or table of another, and the word “hospitality” is the act of generously providing care and kindness to whoever is in need. As a host, one should not simply concern about just meeting or exceeding the guest’s physical and functional needs; but also about satisfying his psychological and emotional needs.  

Unique Individual

Every guest is an individual with his unique physical, functional, psychological, and emotional needs. Service has to be personalised. For example, at a Singapore bank, the customer’s birthday is noted and celebrated. This makes them feel special, and not just a digit in the stream of customers that come and go.

Everyone is Welcome

All customers are your guests. Everyone should feel welcome and be treated with dignity and respect. There should be no discrimination, prejudice or bias against your guest in terms of age, race, gender, religion or culture. Your guest is a human being and any mistreatment can be felt and the pain in his heart will not go away easily. The damage will be greater if the guest complains to his friends, relatives, colleagues and business partners.

Service to others

The hallmark of treating your customers as guests is to be of service to them. The host can feel an emotional sense of satisfaction when he sees and senses that his guest leaves the premises happier than when he first arrived. In the service industry, those who truly excel are those who have a passion and a genuine desire to serve others.

Total Guest Experience

The contact that you have with your guest is not simply a short engagement but a total guest experience involving five stages: pre-arrival, arrival, consumption, departure, and post departure. These stages are termed as the “guest experience cycle”. It is the summation of all physical and non-physical contacts a guest has with the organisation and its staff. People remember experiences and not what you provide.