Michael Sabitoni is an associate professor and department chairperson of Johnson & Wales University’s Center for Food and Beverage Management and the Center for International Travel and Tourism Studies.
For about 10 years, he has been giving customer service training seminars to local convention and visitors bureaus, tourism councils and other organizations and agencies.
Sabitoni gives about 10 of these presentations a year.
His on-the-job experience includes 15 years of being a food-service trainer, a restaurant manager and an international tour guide. He also has been the manager during the opening of several new restaurants.
PBN: Are people in the hospitality industry being that rude that you assembled this seminar?
SABITONI: It’s funny you say that because there were some incidents reported where in response [convention and visitors bureaus] have said, “You know what, we’ve got to get these pockets of people in here.” But unfortunately, when a convention & visitors bureau does this and opens it up to its members for training, many times you end up getting all the right people. You don’t get the people you really want to get. I think of this taxi company in Providence – I don’t remember the name of it – but they had three VIP visitors in the car and the driver made this really off-color joke and really offended the people in the car.
PBN: What is the overall message you try to get across in the seminar?
SABITONI: It’s not rocket science. [Seminar attendees] are already service providers – I have had limo drivers to various hotel staff, restaurants, food service. I start off by telling them that here in Rhode Island, yes, you represent yourself and your business, but more importantly, you are an ambassador to our guests and you represent the state as a whole, and we all work together. From a concierge’s point of view, I’m recommending a restaurant in the city of Providence; from the restaurant’s point of view, they might be making a recommendation for a taxi service, or making a recommendation about the sights the guests can see. So we talk about understanding how we all represent each other, how there are what we call “the moments of truth”– that’s every time a guest comes in contact with a service provider or the establishment.
PBN: Do you see a different attitude about customer service among the different generations of hospitality workers? Do younger employees tend to downplay the importance of service?
SABITONI: It goes back and forth. If you have someone who had a good training problem in their hotel, they realize the importance of customer service. But you try to explain customer service to some in the younger generations, and you’re right, … they’re introverts and they’re working on the Internet and they don’t realize the value of good customer service … I do find the younger crowd more patient and understanding than the older crowd when dealing with an international or foreign guest. … Younger generations are more understanding of the different cultures, realizing that this is our bread and butter.
PBN: What other faux pas – like the cabbie’s off-color joke – have you come across in these seminars?
SABITONI: I often talk to [the attendees] about the first encounter for the guest. Often what happens is that fatigue sets in when someone is at the end of their shift, and you may have five minutes to go and you just want to get out of there. Now a guest comes from God-knows-where after traveling, and you have to treat every guest like this is the first time. It is usually when there is a changing of shift or when people are tired or fatigued when we hear of people being ignored or people talking down to guests.
And there’s stereotyping. We talk about stereotyping. Are you judging someone by their clothes? Are you judging someone by their language skills? Are you judging someone by the color of their skin? There are a lot of horror stories.
PBN: Any specific horror stories?
SABITONI: Well, I’ve been told that some waiters and waitresses don’t want to wait on the Japanese because they believe they don’t tip well. And when we have discussions like this, there’s always someone who will say, “Well, it’s true.” And I’ll say, “No, no, no.”
Then we have the stories of the off-color jokes. Sometimes people will say, “Isn’t it OK to infuse humor into your customer service setting?” And we’ll talk about what is appropriate and what isn’t, and what is appropriate to you may not be to someone else.
PBN: Then how do you infuse humor into interactions with guests without risking offending someone?
SABITONI: I often suggest that we use humor that is about ourselves. My experience or something I did that is a funny story. Not referring to another guest that was once here because [the current guest] might be thinking they’ll be the subject of a story in the future. It’s always safe ground to talk about you or your family or your friends.
PBN: Do you have some bullet point attributes that someone involved in the hospitality industry can’t do without?
SABITONI: Here are some of them: product and service knowledge; courtesy and politeness, perceiving customer requirements, efficiency and promptness, punctuality, assertiveness, understanding cultural differences, cross-selling. I like to land on cross selling because I like to talk about how we’re all in this together. “I hope you can recommend my taxi service and I’ll recommend your restaurant, and the concierge will recommend the attraction the guest can go see tomorrow, and we all win.”
PBN: You talk about perceiving customer requirements and recognizing when a guest wants you. How do you do that?
SABITONI: First of all, look at [the] nonverbals of a guest. Do they put their head down? Do they maintain eye contact? Are they looking at you when they talk to you? Or do they put up barrier signs, like they get in your taxi or are in your lobby and they bring a book and put it up like they want to be left alone. There’s the verbal communication that you want to acknowledge where they may want to start a conversation – “So tell me what’s happening in the city.” That definitely indicates to me that this person wants to talk. Or if the person comes into a cab and says, “This is where I need to go” and sits back and then gives me short answers, that indicates to me that he really doesn’t want to engage in a conversation.
PBN: If guests are inviting conversation, does it mean a hospitality worker is required to converse?
SABITONI: If a customer wants to talk to you, you want to be able to communicate. You want to extend that conversation. It has that personal side of it and that’s what customer service is all about – taking it to another level.
PBN: What if you’ve got nothing to say?
SABITONI: We can talk about what makes us unique, what makes the city stand out, why you like the city so much, the culture in the city, the food tourism, things like that. Ask how long the guest is going to be here. “Are you visiting something while you’re here? Ah, the John Brown House. Very historic place. You should walk down Benefit Street while you’re here.”
PBN: Do you have tips for hospitality professionals that they can implement immediately?
SABITONI: I think what they need to recognize is what we refer to in the industry as “the moments of truth.” The definition is anytime a customer comes in contact with the service staff or the establishment. … When I trained managers, I use to say to them get out from the back of the house and walk out see what your guests are seeing when they walk in. Let’s look at the windows. Look at the litter in the garden. Look at the entrance way. What are they seeing? That’s a moment of truth.
PBN: There’s a perception out there that customer service – either in hospitality or in other industries – isn’t as good as it use to be. Do you think that’s true?
SABITONI: That’s correct. Think about it, when I was younger there were no ATMs. We use to go the bank. When I go to the supermarket, I don’t need to come in contact with anybody. We have built this society where we want to be in and out, and we want to have less contact with people. When I first started at the university, we had a program for travel agents. In the past 15 years, we’ve seen a major decline in travel agents and the enrollments in that program. Starting this year, we have a new travel agency certificate program because people at AAA and people at Liberty Travel have come to us and said the well is dry. There are no qualified people out there any more. •
