Do the Farewells Sabotage Your Business?
By Ken Burgin

Compare two different farewell experiences:

At the first, there was a slight nod from the barman as we opened the door and left. The food had been excellent but the service minimal - no-one really knew we had gone.

Elsewhere on the next night, the food wasn't exciting but the service warm and attentive. As we left, the nearest staff member automatically moved to the door to say goodbye and shake our hands, followed by the owner who also warmly farewelled us. We returned some days later and it was just as friendly - the first time was not just luck.

Your good work can be undone in the last minute of the visitor's experience: these crucial 60 seconds need careful planning and design to ensure their visit ends on a high note, not a dull thud.

Some examples you may have experienced:

• The nearest person to the departing guest bids them a warm farewell (like the example above). This can happen no matter what size your business- it happens at my local sushi train every time!
  
• When you call large organisations (eg a bank) for information, you are often asked at the end of the conversation 'is there anything else we can help you with?'. This is easy to implement even with standard callers who just want the address or menu information.
• The account payment is handled quickly and accurately when a customer is ready to leave. Customers have a strange time system: sloooooow during the meal, then a rush for the account when they want to go. Organise around it, and upgrade equipment to support a better experience.
• A complimentary chocolate or small souvenir  item is brought when you are obviously not ordering any more. Or your water glass is topped up one more time.
• The last taste is one of the best: delicious dessert, fresh herbal tea, an aperitif or a great coffee.
• Security guards or door people (if you use them) give a courteous farewell, not just a silent stare. These people are so rarely used for a positive PR role - make it part of their job.
• The final experience outside: nothing alarming in the street as customers leave, and their car is still where they left it!

Most of these factors are under your control, and no matter how many customers you serve in an hour, the final smile and farewell goes a long way towards creating a return visitor.

The final 60 seconds needs as much scripting as order taking or phone sales: when it becomes a standard, friendly routine, the return rate is sure to be higher!

 About Ken Burgin
Ken Burgin has been actively involved in restaurants and cafes for more than 25 years. First as the owner of Caffe Troppo and partner in Paganini Restaurant in Sydney, Australia, and for the past 12 years, working with restaurants, hotels and cafes in an advisory role. He also travels frequently to the USA and Europe to keep track of the the latest and most useful industry trends, which he shares with members in frequent website updates www.profitablehospitality.com.

Creating useful meetings
By Scott Belsky  »  Business Leadership  »  November 18, 2010 

We can’t rid the world of meetings. After all, the benefits of meeting can outweigh the costs. But we can meet more wisely. Here are a handful of the tips I have observed in productive teams:

1. Beware of ‘Posting Meetings’
If you leave a meeting without action steps, then you should question the value of the meeting (especially if it is recurring). A meeting to ‘share updates’ should actually be a voice-mail or an email.

2. Abolish Monday Meetings
Gathering people for no other reason than ‘it’s Monday!’ makes little-to-no sense, especially when trying to filter through the bloated post-weekend inbox. Automatic meetings end up becoming ‘posting’ meetings.

3. Finish With a Review of Actions Captured
At the end of every meeting, go around and review the action steps each person has captured. The exercise takes less than 30 seconds per person, and it almost always reveals a few action steps that were missed. The exercise also breeds a sense of accountability. If you state your action steps in front of your colleagues, then you are likely to follow through. (I think this is particularly useful - and keeps everyone engaged.)

4. Make All Meetings ‘Standing Meetings’
One best practice I observed in the field was ‘standing meetings’ – meetings in which people gather and remain standing. The tendency to sit back and reiterate points – commentate rather than content-make – dwindles as people get weak in the knees. Standing meetings become more actionable. Most impromptu meetings that are called to quickly catch up on a project or discuss a problem can happen in ten minutes or less.

5. State the Purpose of Every Meeting at the Start
Start every meeting with a simple question: “Why are we here, and what are we supposed to accomplish?” Laying out the objective and setting the meeting’s tone is one of the leader’s key responsibilities.

6. Bring Back Transit Time
Building in 10-15 minutes of travel time between meetings can significantly reduce stress. In an article for Harvard Business Review, entrepreneur and business writing teacher, David Silverman, makes the point that, in grade school, when the bell would ring, we knew we had 15 minutes to get to the next class.

“Why is it?” he asks “that when we graduate, they take away our bells, replace them with an irritating ‘doink’ sound signaling ‘five minutes until your next meeting’ and assume we can now teleport to the location?” What could cause such madness? In two words: Microsoft Outlook. It seems that the default principles of corporate scheduling have stripped us of the precious transit time that keeps peace of mind between meetings. To bring it back, Silverman suggests that, when scheduling an hour-long meeting, put it in the calendar for 50-minutes.

7. If You Must Meet, Meet on Tuesday at 3pm
LifeHacker reported a retrospective study from the online meeting scheduling service “When is Good” where, after reviewing over 100 000 responses to 34 000 events on their platform, they realised that Tuesday at 3pm was the most ‘available’ spot for a meeting. Such a finding suggests that there may be certain times (and days) during the week that, despite varied work flows, work best for your team. Hey, it’s not scientific, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

8.Think before you meet
Admired leaders recognise the need to measure the value of meetings. Among the most productive leaders and teams I observed throughout the research for my new book, I found that the vast majority of teams shared a healthy hesitation to call meetings. Consider the above tips as ammunition against wasting precious resources in your small business.

About the Author
Scott Belsky studies exceptionally productive people and teams in the creative world.

There will be more mobile bookings and research.
More and more travellers will be turning to their mobile devices to not only research lodging and travel options, but to book and communicate room preferences directly with the hotel. Mobile channel booking has increased four-fold between 2008 and 2010 according to Forrester Research. Plus, Google is projecting that mobile will overtake PCs as the most common Web-access device by 2013. With travellers adopting smartphones and tablets at such a rapid pace, it's crucial for hoteliers to optimize their website for mobile usage to capture potential mobile transactions.

Social media will continue to transform connections with travellers.
By 2016, half of the travel industry will be using social media as a way of generating revenue and bookings. Currently more than one-fifth (22 %) use social media as a revenue generating tool with a further 27 % planning to do so over the next five years. Plus, social media will become more of a key component of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) algorithms. Facebook's posts are already integrated into Bing search and Google+ emerged with native integration into Google search. Hotels can no longer afford to linger over adding social media to their marketing mix. It's now a necessary element of traffic-driving success.

Mr. Rauch serves as President of R. A. Rauch & Associates, Inc. He is a nationally recognized, hotelier serving clients in all facets of the industry. Rauch has over 35 years of hospitality-related management experience.