The Intangibles Of Sincere Service
There is a wonderful research paper titled 'Analysis of Tangible and Intangible Hotel Service Quality Components' by Dražen Marić, Veljko Marinković, Radenko Marić, Darko Dimitrovski4
Here is what they did. They asked 220 respondents in Serbia about 33 service quality attributes (both tangible and intangible attributes).
Here are the attributes:
The external appearance of the hotel is modern.
The hotel is excellently located.
The hotel has top-of-the-range equipped reception desks.
The hotel has a visually appealing brochure.
The hotel has a well-designed lobby.
The hotel has clean rooms.
The hotel has spacious rooms.
The hotel room has a minibar.
The hotel has an appealing restaurant and bar.
The beds, pillows and bedding.
The hotel rooms have comfortable bathrooms.
The hotel has a pool.
The hotel has a sauna.
The hotel has sports facilities.
Business lounges are always at guests’ disposal.
The hotel regularly maintains the hotel lawn and turf.
The hotel room has a TV set.
The seating arrangement in the restaurant and bars is good.
The hotel’s food and drinks are of high quality.
Any promises made to guests are met within the agreed deadline.
Hotel staff invest sincere effort to solve the guests’ problems.
Hotel bills are flawless.
The hotel always provides service like the first time.
The hotel staff provide guests with all required information.
The staff provide fast and immediate service.
The staff are willing to help the guests at any moment.
The staff’s behaviour is reassuring.
The hotel staff is courteous to the guests.
The staff devote adequate attention to each guest.
The hotel staff appear to give priority to what is best for the guests.
The hotel staff understand the guests’ specific needs.
Check-in and check-out are efficient.
The hotel provides full security for its guests.
The results will vary for country, culture, destination, level of service etc, so the specific findings of this research may not apply to you or your hotel. What does apply, however, is the tracking of intangibles.
A service experience is made up of both tangibles and intangibles. You can use one of your senses to interact with a tangible resource in the real world. While you can 'feel' both, intangibles do not have a so-called 'real' existence. It's all in your mind.
So, for example, a restaurant or pub is a real space, with furniture, lights, music etc, and these are tangible. The ambience on the other hand is what you feel, and intangible.
Your people are tangible, the 'care' they offer, is intangible.
Let's take one such attribute and drill down.
Hotel staff invest sincere effort to solve the guests’ problems.
Notice how, the measure is not the number of complaints, but rather a more esoteric 'sincere' effort. The focus is on making the guest feel seen and heard. A sincere effort may not result in a perfect outcome, but the effort gets points. How do you demonstrate sincerity? Can we track it? Here's an idea. If you keep a track of the number of complaints at your hotel for any given day, then add a little column that says 'did the team meet the guest in person?'. With phones, apps, it is easy to get complaints and not realise that there is a person facing a problem on the other end.
Actionable Insight
Find a tangible and an intangible for every process or outcome.
example, Fond Farewell.
Tangible:
A bill with no errors. Track this measure. How many times does the guest notice and point out an error that then needs to be corrected? This can be tracked easily.
Bags are in the lobby/car before the guest has settled the bill. Again, easy to track.
Front Desk / Guest Relations walks the guest to the porch. Bids them farewell. You can even add a very specific measure 'did the team wave goodbye?'.
Some resorts, like to make sure there are at least 3 team members wearing different uniforms saying goodbye.
A farewell goodie bag. Water, a fruit or cookie etc.
Intangible:
Warm farewell. Measuring that is a little trickier.
It has been suggested that since 'smiling' was an integral part of warm service, we should measure how many times team members smile. You can measure this. You can also measure how many times (as a percentage of interactions) do they smile at their colleagues. However, a smile is sincere only when it travels to the eyes. That should be the true measure.
Maybe we can track our success by the guest behaviour? How many guests thanked the team at the porch? Or how many waved back from the car?
You will need to get creative. Go back to simpler times and remember how a host measured if we liked the food they served. Remember how she would say 'but you haven't eaten at all! or 'You haven't taken another helping', or 'You still have food left on your plate'. The measure was not with a rating on a scale of 1 - 10. If you really liked the food, her eyes sparkled with pride. Help your teams, find that joy in the service of your guests.
