Expensive Editor,
Good customer support typically means going above and past to maintain a shopper or buyer happy and completely happy. It means answering any questions they’ve, resolving points with a constructive perspective, and attending to and offering the shopper with immediate, correct, dependable, and courteous service. It even means anticipating the wants of shoppers and clients. Buyer satisfaction is a excessive precedence, particularly in a service enterprise, as a result of creating loyal and returning clients contributes mightily to gross sales and income. When you will have happy clients, they’re extra prone to advocate your corporation to others in particular person and affect others by way of social media, thus offering a free type of promoting.
Within the U.S. Virgin Islands, we’re primarily a service-based economic system (82 % of 2019 GDP: Supply BEA). We’ve little or no agriculture or manufacturing. Inside our largely service-based economic system, our most essential financial sector is tourism. Over 2.3 million worldwide guests (common every year between 2010 and 2020: Supply UNWTO) come to our shores and use the companies of airways, cruise ship operators, taxi drivers, automobile rental companies, tour operators, eating places, bars, night time golf equipment, reward retailers, grocery shops, comfort marts, gasoline stations, seaside tools rental distributors, ATMs of monetary establishments, accommodations, and short-term trip rental lodging. Between 2010 and 2019, tourism expenditures averaged $2.8 billion per yr, a good portion of territorial GDP (Statista).
Good customer support is paramount for the reason that Virgin Islands is a tourism-dependent economic system. We wish vacationers to have a seamless set of nice and satisfying experiences and interactions. Why? They are going to be extra prone to return and to talk extremely to their mates and acquaintances of the Virgin Islands as a most popular tourism vacation spot.
The Virgin Islands has solar, sand, and surf as its principal tourism product. However many different locations within the Caribbean promote the identical; additionally they have the identical stunning sugary white sand seashores, clear turquoise waters, balmy tropical climate, and putting scenic magnificence. Many different locations within the Caribbean are lower-cost locations than the V.I. For instance, in response to the Journey Price Index, the common value per day, per particular person, based mostly on surveys of actual vacationers within the Caribbean area, the V.I. ranks fifteenth out of 25 Caribbean locations, in fourth quantile.
The Journey Price for the V.I. is $248 as of 2021, in comparison with Barbados, the priciest vacation spot at $376.80, and the 2 lowest-cost locations of Cuba ($41) and Haiti ($32.60). The peer rivals of the V.I. — Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Bahamas — mature locations with excessive ranges of airline connections to the U.S., the principle supply of vacationers, all have decrease prices per day than the V.I. For instance, the journey value index for the Dominican Republic is $142.38, Puerto Rico is $217.69, and Jamaica is $129.57. The Bahamas is the one mature vacation spot with a better value index than the V.I. ($250.26). Due to this fact, one of many principal areas we will distinguish and differentiate ourselves is having a fame for superior to wonderful customer support. A fame for excellent customer support within the V.I. can compensate for larger prices.
Sadly, many anecdotes of lower than exemplary customer support within the V.I. abound — lackadaisical attitudes, reduce eye, sucking of enamel, the glacial tempo of service, gruff exchanges, issues with punctuality, not returning cellphone calls, the disposition that the shopper/buyer and their considerations/needs aren’t that essential to be it in authorities workplaces, eating places, automobile rental companies, on the airport, or shops. The few empirical surveys of vacationer satisfaction with the Virgins Islands present that frontline vacationer staff (taxi drivers, tour operators, reward store personnel) are middling of the pack in comparison with different Caribbean jurisdictions (Customer Survey 2015, Florida Cruise Ship Affiliation 2014).
One common vacationer vacation spot identified for good customer support is the Dominican Republic. Servers and housekeeping employees within the Dominican Republic are well-known for being ingratiating. Taxi drivers arrive early and wait till disembarking company have entered their property at night time. The mix of an affordable value of a trip, good airlift, good customer support, all kinds of actions to have interaction in, and beautiful seashores have contributed to creating the Dominican Republic the highest vacationer vacation spot within the Caribbean.
For the Virgin Islands, we have to observe and study from different competing tourism locations and goal to enhance our customer support and use it to our aggressive benefit. We should explicitly worth customer support and make it an integral a part of our enterprise mannequin. We have to train customer support, we have to make periodic assessments to see how we’re progressing, see how we evaluate ourselves to others, and we have to perceive that good customer support income.
How would we begin a program of sustained customer support enchancment? Reply: Implement a broad-based customer support coaching program and have periodic evaluations.
The ideas of fine customer support are having staff and employees develop and observe: 1) endurance, 2) efficient listening, 3) attentiveness, 4) data, 5) empathy, 6) proactive, 7) clear communication, 8) not making a promise you cannot ship on, 9) realizing when to say you have no idea and 10) courtesy and professionalism.
Quick programs that train and reveal these traits ought to be designed. These programs ought to emphasize experiential studying, that’s, role-playing acceptable for the enterprise or service sector. For instance, have some worker or a advisor faux to be a buyer and check one other worker in numerous eventualities. New staff being onboarded ought to get some publicity or coaching on customer support ideas. Refresher programs and spot assessments of how properly staff present customer support ought to develop into normal enterprise practices. Precedence ought to be given to tourism-related frontline employees within the first section. Then, as a normal government-sanctioned labor improvement coverage, customer support coaching ought to unfold to different companies within the non-tourism and the complete public sectors.
— Gemma A. Wenner, a resident of St. Thomas, lectures in Tourism and Hospitality at Southern Illinois College.
