COS

NEWS

I’ve been waiting 30 minutes for a waiter to take my order – they’re obviously understaffed. A young man arrived, full of good will and determined to give us the least bad experience possible.
Dinner was tedious, but not through the fault of this dedicated young waiter who did his best.
I start talking to him to find out what’s wrong with this hotel. He explains to me that 2 cooks and 3 waiters resigned in the middle of summer, that the bosses don’t hear the difficulties and… that the head of catering… has gone on vacation!

It all makes sense. Here’s an establishment that’s not customer-focused enough to scare off its staff… and soon its customers.
“Why don’t you leave?” I asked him. I like this job and I want to keep learning, I’ll finish the season and then I’ll leave” he replied. I left, leaving him a generous tip and cheering him on.

On a more general note, I have the feeling that the quality/price ratio of our services is deteriorating sharply.
Don’t you have the bitter feeling that you’re often paying far too much for the level of service you get?
What’s going on?

It’s true that rising costs mean that costs have to be squeezed, and when this is not kept under control, it inevitably affects the quality of the service delivered.

On the other hand, recruitment difficulties mean that some are forced to run the service in downgraded mode.

And then there are the teams in place, but (all too often) with little motivation and no taste for a job well done.

In the midst of all this, some companies are doing very well, with no recruitment or motivation problems, offering quality work and, as a result, customers who end up “getting their money’s worth”.

How do they do it? These companies haven’t changed a thing; they’d been working on their customer culture for years, the best bulwark against crises. Now they’re taking advantage of the despair of those who saw customer culture only as a passing fad.

I have a hunch that this will be a painful period for some companies (and, incidentally, for the many customers who have fallen victim to the dysfunctions), but that something positive will come out of it, with a healthier market that retains strongly customer-oriented companies at its heart.