Team Work is Essential to Good Customer Service

As a hotel manager I am required to train new associates in the ways of my hotel’s standards in customer service. I help to develop their customer service skills so that they may provide the same great service to our hotel guests that each and every other hotel of my brand in the country and around the world is providing. One of the main concepts I try hard to instill in my newbie customer service representatives is team work. Without the hotel staff working together, it would be impossible to provide proper service to our guests and everything would fall apart.

Good team work is an essential part of the customer service skills arsenal. Let’s go to a hotel for an example of how team work is important. What are the main luxuries guests have come to expect out of their hotels during their stay? They expect to be checked in and given information, they expect their room to be clean, they expect the food to be good, and they expect to not have to pay so much. All of those expectations build up and make the impression of your hotel in the guests mind and each of those expectations must be handled and cared for so that the guest has a positive stay.

Let’s see what would happen if there was no team involved. What if the front desk had to manage everything in the hotel and meet all of the guest’s expectations? With no team to work with, this is going to be a difficult task. It might be manageable if the hotel has just one room but with hotels and hotel chains growing daily, we need a team to keep them up and running.

Communication between departments is the foundation of good team work. Without good communication there can be no team work or cooperation because no one will know what to do and when to do it. Just like in team sports, while one player is doing something he needs to communicate his goals either before or during the action in order to ensure that his team is functioning along side him.

If but one player falls short of understanding the communication the entire play can be lost. Just like if the front desk does not communicate to the housekeeping staff that the room needs to be allergen free, the task will not get done and the guest will complain that their room caused them to have an allergic reaction and go to the hospital.