Bill Quiseng Interview: How to Succeed with Service

Today I’m joined by Bill Quiseng, General Manager of The Inn at Bay Harbor and a highly sought after speaker on customer service leadership. Under Bill’s oversight, The Inn has received the Renaissance Hotels & Resorts Savvy Service Award, and has been named one of the Top 500 World’s Best Hotels by Travel+Leisure magazine.

Is customer service the key to succeeding in this economy?

Absolutely! No matter the economic situation, people will continue to pay a premium for quality. In our luxury segment, people buy with emotion. So we create an experience that will emotionally bond our customers to us.

Our customer’s perception is not driven by the tangible product. Our competitors can replicate our product. The king bed at The Inn is no bigger than the king bed at the Super 8 across the street. What they can’t replicate is our people. If we can get our people delivering consistently on our customer service message, we will continue to build market share despite this economy. We keep that message simple, say it often and make it burn in our people.

The message: WWWBLL. WWWBLL. (pronounced “Weeble, Weeble”). What would World’s Best look like? Then we go about to deliver that experience. Remember Weebles? “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” If we can deliver a World’s Best experience as our customers perceive it, we may wobble but we won’t fall down. Has our focus on WWWBLL, WWWBLL paid off? All I can tell you is that our booking pace for social room nights is up 20%+ over last year.

Service has always been important in the hospitality industry. Do we just need to be reminded of its importance, or are there new tactics we can use?

I am always looking for new tactics using the CASE Method – Copy and Steal Everything from within and outside our industry. The late Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said “Five years from now, you’ll be the same person you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” John DiJulius, author of Secret Service, gave us CASE ideas about customer service in John Roberts salons that we have put into our Spa. John Michelli, author of The New Gold Standard, gave us CASE ideas from Ritz Carlton. Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table gave us restaurant ideas. And Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends gave us CASE principles that we use in our new hire orientation.

In addition, we continually practice the service mantra, “You cannot begin to satisfy Guests, until you remove all the dissatisfiers.” We take every single Guest negative comment or complaint and define a Best Practice to eliminate the possibility of reoccurrence.

How do you facilitate people telling stories about your hotel?

I continually tell our team to “Think like the customer.” Our Guests are on vacation. When we think like the customer, we know that when our Guests return back home they, as we would when we return from a vacation, will tell stories of their destination. It is up to us to drive what kinds of stories our Guests tell.

So we make sure that we create a bunch of small wows that culminate to a large “Wow” when they think of the collective experience such as Apple caramel cookies and hot apple cider during this time of year at check-in, personalized menu and digital picture taken and presented prior to departure for anniversary couples dining in the dining room, and rose petal turndown for those couples staying in The Inn.

How are you using the internet to build customer relationships?

We recognize that new customers are migrating from travel agents to the internet to get information about our property. We also recognize that our present customers can be referrals and advocates for us. When we receive a very complimentary comment card, we request their permission to post their comments on our testimonial page on our website. At the same time, we are encouraging people to sign up as a fan of The Inn on Facebook.

Thank you for your insights, Bill.

To learn more about Bill, visit his website at BillQuiseng.com.