You always want to present the illusion to customers that all is well. Whenever anyone comes and visits your store or hospitality venue, you want them to enjoy their time, enjoy the service and leave feeling as though they experienced the best that your brand has to offer.
Of course, in business, things are always moving behind the scenes. Sometimes, this is business as usual and you feel as though you’re in control of things, but at other times, it can feel as though you’re barely keeping a handle on where your business is headed. These times will pass, though, and you don’t want that to show to your customers.
Customer Service and In-Built Responses
The biggest giveaway if something is wrong is going to be the way that your staff react. In much the same way that passengers look to the aeroplane crew when the plane is undergoing turbulence, uncertainty in your employees might create unease in your customers. Even if your employees are struggling to deal with a situation that is occurring behind the scenes, making sure that they’re able to continuously deliver excellent service with a comfortable presence might ensure that business at least appears to continue as usual.
Part of preparing for this might even come in your staff training. Through intranet platforms developed with consultants like www.claromentis.com, you might cover this event and how to respond – or it might just specify how the comfort of the customer should always be held as a priority.
Recognizing Spillover
If the situation has really gotten out of control – if there’s some sort of blatant incident in the kitchen at a restaurant, for example – there is a high chance that customers are going to notice anyway. There comes a point where attempts to try and ignore or downplay the problem might have the opposite effect, and could only draw attention to how badly you’ve lost control of the situation. Instead, it’s important to focus on communication here and how that can keep customers calm.
For example, you might feel as though there is a need for you to come out and address everyone – either to explain what’s happening and when all will be normal again or to say that you need to temporarily close to sort out the issue. In either case, feeling as though they’re in the loop can help to calm nerves.
Staying Calm
Of course, your own nerves are equally important here. When everything feels as though it’s spiralling out of control, you’re naturally going to start to panic and become stressed. It’s a difficult skill to master, but being able to temporarily just calm yourself and think practically can be transformative in these situations. There are multiple skills and approaches that can help you to do this, but a lot of them come down to not getting washed away in the anxiety of it all. You’re in a leadership position, and people are going to look to you for support – so it’s important that you can plot a clear and decisive course of action.
