“The hospitality side of hospitality” might sound redundant but making your hotel exceptional can be a competitive advantage.
THE BUBL FRAMEWORK
I’d like to introduce one practice or lesson of exceptional guest service; a framework codified as the BUBL (pronounced “bubble”) method. The awareness and behaviors represented in the BUBL acronym can assist in interacting with guests in such an effective and nuanced way that they can transform the level of guest service provided at your property.
The basis of BUBL, and the reason for the name, is the concept that each of your guests is surrounded by an individual, invisible, protective bubble. To be able to provide exceptional guest service, your team needs to be aware of this phenomenon and be conscious of the extent to which a guest’s individual protective shell is open or closed at any moment while in a public space.
BUBL-level service is about learning to recognize when it’s okay to venture near and into the guest’s protective bubble within which the guest has expectations of solitude and how to interact with the guest while that bubble is open. As an example, this is what a well-trained attendant in a club-level lounge will do when he or she discreetly avoids interrupting a guest mid-thought or mid-conversation. Conversely, he or she will reverse course and provide service as soon as it’s clear that there is no interruption.
The four steps of the BUBL method for attentive guest service are:
B: Begin immediately
U: Untangle the guest’s messages and pacing
B: Break your schedule
L: Leave room for more interaction
→Begin immediately: A guest expects service to begin the exact moment that he or she comes into contact with an employee, so deciphering whether or not the guest actually considers meaningful contact to have been made is an important part of this step. For example, if a guest catches a server’s eye, it may be merely accidental, but if the guest holds the server’s gaze, it usually means that the guest expects assistance. (At busy times, the “begin immediately” step may need to be accomplished even if the employee is busy speaking with another customer. This requires learning to work with one customer while visually acknowledging the presence of a new arrival.)
→Untangle: Decipher the messages the customer is giving you about their desired pacing of service, as well as their level of happiness or distress and other emotions and adjust appropriately. (Such cues aren’t only detectable in person, by the way; they can be discerned on the phone, in online chat, via videoconferencing, etc.)
→Break your schedule: The customer has let you into their bubble. Drop what you’re doing and work on their needs. True service can never be slave to checking things off in a predetermined order. Attending properly to a customer means adhering to the customer’s schedule, not your own. This means, for example, waiting for a natural break in conversation before asking how a meal is tasting, rather than barging in when your guest is in animated discourse or mid-bite into a juicy burger.
→ Leave room for more: Is this really goodbye? Check before you conclude the interaction. It’s the service professional’s responsibility to ask if anything additional is needed and, if it isn’t, to graciously thank the customer before leaving them on their way.
THE GUEST IS EVERYTHING
The reason that such subtle aspects of service make a difference is because the guest wants to feel they’re at the center of your world. And, as a service provider, there’s a lot of power in creating this impression. In a sense, it’s an illusion, because you have a life of your own and more than one guest to support. But it’s an extremely powerful business-building illusion for the hospitality professional who can successfully pull it off.
Guests are already at the center of their own world; it’s their own reality. All that matters to them is themselves and the people they care about, a category that probably only tangentially includes you. What they want from you as a service provider is not for you to grab center stage, but to reassure them that they hold center stage in your world as well as in their own.
Micah Solomon is a customer service expert and guest service trainer. He can be reached at micah@micahsolomon.com.
