When language impacts hospitality's reputation
You would think that in environments where the customer is king and your reputation is built on service excellence, an organisation would try to ensure that its team is able to understand the language of its customers. Especially if the customers' language is native to the language of the country hosting the organisation. So would I, but I have recently seen first hand that this is not always the case. The result.... when organisations neglect language skills, forgivable situations become unforgivable.
Some former colleagues recently held a corporate business development week at a hotel in the South of England. The hotel sadly didn't live up to expectations based on the price my colleagues paid per room. It was 'tired' and somewhat shabby but the location, overlooking the water, lessened the impact of the shabby interior. My colleagues forgave the shabbiness because of the incredible external environment.
......That was until they tried to order a drink at the bar, or ask the staff a question. Frustratingly for my colleagues, very few staff in the hotel were native English speakers and the level of spoken English amongst the hotel staff was so low that even the most simple exchanges caused them frustration.
We all recognise that the hospitality sector recruits people who are willing to work on low wages, minimum wage in many cases, and these people are often non native speakers. People passing through or new to the country and happy to take whatever job they can get. Their language skills are not fluent, sometimes very poor. Their pronunciation incorrect and their cultural habits different to the host nation. Whilst this recruitment strategy may financially benefit the organisation, it comes with it issues that could negatively impact reputation and customer service if not managed effectively.
If the simple task of asking staff a question becomes a language chore, the customer may experience feelings of frustration and annoyance and this could impact what it thinks of that organisation. Sadly this is what happened and for my colleagues their customer experience was so impacted that the forgivable became unforgivable and I doubt they will return to that hotel.
Across the hospitality sector there needs to be greater recognition that language and communication skills have an important impact on customer service delivery and that without adequate language skills, the organisation's reputation will be negatively impacted.
The development of a language strategy and implementation of in-house language training will help to ensure that customer facing staff have the language capabilities to professionally fulfil their roles. This is good for customers and good for staff. Staff will feel more motivated and valued if the organisation encourages their development and better service delivery will ensure customers have a better experience and are more likely to return or at least say nice things about the organisation.
But if organisations don't want to invest in a language strategy and don't value language competency yet maintain the policy of recruiting non native speakers, then their staff will continue to misunderstand customer requests, and customers will continue to feel frustrated and unsatisfied.... and bang goes reputation.
Corelli offers a number of language strategy services for the hospitality sector to help improve language competencies and improve customer satisfaction. If you are interested in finding out more, please contact me.
