Last week I was invited to return to my former place of employment at Royal Roads University to speak to a dynamic group of undergraduate students in the BA in International Hotel Management program about the Customer Experience. They are just about to embark on their 12-week internship program to practice in industry what they have learned in the classroom.
I took them through a series of activities that first began to ‘think like a traveller’, then a careful listening exercise to understand the value of ‘hearing’ what customers are saying. We then reflected on our best and worst travel experiences, analyzing the powerful words and emotions that emerge, and concluded with an interactive session of creativity, engagement and teamwork to respond to a ‘consumer challenge’.
Too often as operators we are so busy ‘running the business’ we forget to stop and think like a traveler, think like our customer, remember what makes travel meaningful, and allowing time to create and innovate.
One of the key messages was the importance of active listening to your guests. In a busy world, sometimes we listen, but do not hear. Listening with purpose is a valuable tool for operators that can provide a wealth of information about your guests that you will never get from a ’satisfaction’ survey which typically rates only a few elements of your business and doesn’t even touch on ‘their travel experience’. Satisfaction surveys represent supply side thinking and the results do little to inform product or market development. In contrast, meaningful conversations and listening to your guests provides rich insight that can validate current activities, staff contributions, operations. Careful listening can also help you understand ‘where travellers have been and where they are going’ which can provide valuable insight into travel patterns and the additional types of activities and places your visitors go. This in turn may create new opportunities for collaboration, partnerships, or cluster marketing to niche markets.
OpenForum just posted a blog titled “Listen to your customers” and the key message is the same as the one I was emphasizing with our future tourism colleagues.
When I developed the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management programs at Royal Roads University, during an earlier chapter of my career, the same principle applied — before developing anything, we did the traditional market research, but then engaged in months of active questioning and listening with key audiences of our future programs — people who would enrol in them (students!) and industry folks that would hire them (employers!) to ensure we truly understand the needs of those choosing a career in tourism and hospitality, as well as those that would be hiring graduates. What was learned through careful listening and being able to respond to the market place was a large range of program ’shifts’ – packaging we call in it tourism, to an educational product. We adjusted the start times of programs to accommodate for seasonality in the industry, internships for undergraduates were set to the end of the program to allow work experience, then an immediate transfer into the workforce in the fall, when other staff my be departing. At the graduate level we planned courses and residencies (short face-to-face periods of study that complement the online learning) to work around major industry events that would compete with the time of working professionals. Professors were able to accommodate assignment dates around major industry events … and the list goes one. These evolutions not only created the USP – unique selling proposition — it responded to what industry needed. Listening was the key to learning– then with the traditional market research, we were able to confirm the details of the content, test seasonality interests and ensure we introduced an innovative model for graduate education – the Network Model.
All businesses can benefit from listening. You don’t need a PhD or a professional market research firm to do so, rather you just need a system to record what you learn and ensure the questions are relevant. Most importantly, you have to be willing to ‘do something’ with what you learn. Product and market innovation requires the desire and ability to things differently and to take measured risks. Organizations must be willing to support the full development and implementation cycle, allowing time to tweak and refine in the early years. If results are different, or slower than anticipated, it is far less expensive to adjust than to toss away your investment and look for a new golden egg.
Active listening to your customers is a valuable market research tool to gain insight and knowledge. The ability, time and corporate climate to allow the use of this information to evolve what you are doing is vital.
