From our guest blogger- Libby Dubick- Margeting Strategist and Guru- Take a tour of her website below. I highly recommend her- She is a True Marketing Pro.
At Your Service
What can you learn from a hamburger maven? As it turns out,
quite a bit.
I recently heard Danny Meyer and Susan Salagado speak at a Citibank branch. He presides over the Union Square Hospitality Group, which includes many of New York’s top restaurants; Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, and Shake Shack. She is Managing Director at Hospitality Quotient (HQ) the consulting arm of his business.
The two had studied why the group’s restaurants are regularly ranked among
diners’ favorites and were there to share the secret sauce with us: combining
service with hospitality. At HQ they define service as the technical delivery of a product or service. Hospitality is how the transaction feels. When a company combines excellent service with caring hospitality (making the clients feel you are on their side) it is a winning combination.
According to HQ, to create raves a firm’s employees need both technical capabilities -the skills required to get the job done —and emotional capabilities –who they are while they are doing the job. While both are important,the firm weighs the importance of technical capacities at 49 % and emotional capabilities at 51%.
A 51%er has a warm and friendly character, curious intelligence, caring empathy, strong work ethic,self-awareness and empathy, Susan said. They are agents for the client looking for creative solutions when there is a problem.
The opposite of an agent is a gatekeeper, she said, who hides behind
policies, rules or supervisors when dealing with client issues.
“Both may be telling the client no,” Susan said.” the difference lies in how it feels.”
Business owners can apply the HQ formula for success by
recognizing how they sell is an important as what they sell. When it
comes to hiring they can take a page from HQ and search for 51%ers, since
technical skills can be learned, but it is nearly impossible to train someone
to care.
Dubick & Associates,
Ltd.
115 East 87th Street
212-828-3873
Marketing and Distribution Planning for Financial Services Firms
Libby — powerful post. Love the term 51%er. This reminds me of Maya Angelou’s famous line, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” So true.