Leadership & Body Language in Hospitality
INTRODUCTION
Hospitality is a service-oriented industry. By definition, service is hospitality's most fundamental component based on which needs of customers, internal or external, are met. In order to better serve customers, hospitality organizations invest in every possible means to make customers satisfied. This covers changes from as broad as B2B strategic partnerships, international expansions and segmentized promotions) to small-scale as dress code, menus and decorations. In so doing, hospitality companies endeavor to add value in an industry growing more competitive, particularly by recent adoption of ICT platforms and applications enabling immediate peer-to-peer, B2C and B2B feedback. The case for service in hospitality industry is critical and, for that matter, broad. For current purposes, primary focus is laid on body language as an new, emerging area of growing significance in hospitality industry. If anything, integral to offering one or another service in a hospitality context is using body language of staff, particularly frontline personnel. Indeed, a growing number of hospitality companies are making a strong case for body language as a front business line by which needs are not only met but also anticipated. To better understand how body language is assuming an increasingly significant role in hospitality industry and hence of broader implications for service leadership, a closer look is required in different patterns and practices. This paper aims, hence, to explore body language as a growing in significance service requirement for hospitality leadership.
The paper is made up of four sections in addition to introduction: (1) Trends & Significance, (2) Case Study, (3) Personal Reflection and (4) Conclusion. The Trends & Significance section identifies growing need for body language as a critical service component and discusses broader significance of adopting body language as a service component. The Case Study section discusses in detail how a hospitality company, namely Affinia hotel chain, employs body language as service component for customer's satisfaction and comfort. The Personal Reflection section offers deeper insights for and discusses broader implications for adopting body language in hospitality industry, particularly from a hospitality career perspective. The Conclusion section wraps up main arguments and discusses future patterns.
TRENDS & SIGNIFICANCE
The emergence of body language as an increasingly central area in hospitality industry is well noted in literature and industry practices. Notably, in a study exploring degree of preparedness among hospitality business graduates, results show participants consistently emphasize a lack of emphasize on interpersonal communication and leadership skills in school curriculum, skills required for more satisfactory customer experiences (Lolli, 2013). These findings are consistent to findings in a study surveying 175 hospitality management graduates on importance of verbal communication, particularly learning foreign languages, in professional progress (Yuan, Houston & Cai, 2008). The study shows participants attach different importance to learning foreign languages for professional development, a finding which runs against a historical "conventional wisdom" of how important verbal communication is in understanding and meeting customer needs.
In practice, hospitality industry has become increasingly aware of non-verbal communication in staff-customer encounters. Specifically, first moments of staff-customer encounters are identified as most critical for not only avoiding customer dissatisfaction (and hence discontinuation of service and/or sharing negative feedback) but also to anticipate needs during short or long stays (Petersen, 2012; Hein, 2011). As noted, frontline staff is prepped for more customer satisfaction. In a first concrete step of emphasizing non-verbal communication, particularly body language, hospitality industry has used what is referred to in literature as "esthetic labor" by emphasizing dress code and physical appearance for more customer satisfaction and, more broadly, for more quality service (Tsaur, & Tang, 2013), a practice which, in more exaggerated forms, borders on sexualization of hospitality (Warhurst, & Nickson, 2009). Needless to emphasize, hospitality is one leading industry in adapting to and catering for changing customer needs. This is attributed to industry's complex nature. Accordingly, professional development has been a constant staple in career progress offerings for staff, particularly in diversity areas (Kuo, 2009). Thus, in picking up body language, hospitality industry only resumes a historical pattern of customer service and satisfaction with a new focus.
The case for how significant body language is cannot be overemphasized. Indeed, both in literature and practice, non-verbal communication is shown to assume a critical role in staff-customer interactions and encounters, mainly by employing kinesics, paralanguage, proxemics, and physical appearance (Sundaram & Webster, 2000). This role is not only justified by how body language represents another important source for identifying customer needs (and hence better service and satisfaction) but also due to how much body language represents of staff-customer encounters. Notably, body language accounts for 60-80 % of perceived impact during a business negotiation process, including service encoders in a hospitality context (Lin, 2015). Indeed, if most recent hospitality practices are becoming increasingly performed using web-based platforms for customer conversion, one would expect handling actual, physical encounters in a hospitality venue to be as customer-friendly as possible (including by using proper body language) or else customers gained fast prior to actual physical encounters would be lost as fast if not handled properly using body language.
Consistent to growing significance of body language in hospitality industry, Affinia hotel chain has adopted one-of-a-kind body language and customer satisfaction program, Tender Loving Comfort (TLC). Targeting frontline personnel, TLC develops body language interpretation skills including, most notably, reading lips, posture and tone of voice (Kelly, 2011). Training is conducted by celebrated body language expert Patti Wood and is aimed to emphasize practical interpersonal skills in what are decidedly highly distracting and signal-rich working environments. The professional development of Affinia staff is complemented by a no less important component of body language making and interpretation. Specifically, renowned mixologist Dushan Zaric is offering advice for company's staff in what is referred to as "Art of Being Present" ("Affinia Hotels Hires World-Renowned Mixologist," 2012). The primary focus of Zaric's training is to develop concentration skills of staff upon serving one customer. Specifically, by training staff how to prepare Negroni cocktail in a consistent manner, aside from one's own state of mind, participants learn practically how mental and emotional experiences could impact on attitudes (and hence services for) toward customers. The TLC program is not limited, moreover, to company's personnel but includes customers as well. Notably, TLC includes components of TLC Crew, Comfort Hour, Comfort Cart – all meant to engage customers in innovative ways to offer feedback on company's range of product and service offerings ("Affinia Hotels Hires World-Renowned Mixologist"). The program is still in initial phases and is projected, given current positive feedback from staff, customers and industry, to include more components and innovative offerings.
The TLC is, if anything, a leading practice by a "boutique" hotel chain and is representative of further differentiation of service value for more customer satisfaction. By providing body language offerings for hotels' personnel, Affinia hotel chain does not only keep up with most recent industry practices of emphasizing non-verbal communication, as noted above, but also leading industry by offering more formal training on body language. In a similar pattern in startup and/or independently-managed and owned companies, Affinia leads hospitality industry by offering an innovative approach to handling customer satisfaction well beyond conventional means adopted by more established industry players. Specifically, by hiring experts from outside immediate hospitality industry realm, Affinia is creating a disruptive model for customer engagement and staff re-orientation. This is particularly manifest in bring up experience as a core component of service quality.
The growing significance of experience in hospitality cannot be overemphasized. In an industry product and service offerings are converging at accelerating rate, experience comes as a central component for value differentiation. Accordingly, by enhancing non-verbal competences of staff, Affinia is, in fact, aiming at differentiating service value by more accurate – and, for that matter, immediate – identification of customer needs. The Negroni cocktail exercise proposed by Zaric is one example of how subtle experiences occurring during staff-customer encounters could impact on product and service quality. The very brief encounter of staff-customer during asking and preparing a Negroni cocktail highlights, ingeniously, both product and service components in a very common hospitality context.
PERSONAL REFLECTION
The case of body language in hospitality has broader implications from a professional development perspective. In addition to enhancement of customer understanding, body language – as a new, emerging component of service quality – is further problematized if cultural diversity and security concerns are factored in. If anything, growing diversity in hospitality industry (Baum et al. 2007) and security concerns (Clifton, 2012) are re-shaping response to customer body language in new, different ways inexperienced in earlier encounters between comparatively highly predictable staff-customer interactions in comparatively safer settings. By factoring in cultural diversity and security concerns, one would not only require more adequate interpersonal communication grounding, first, at college and, later during professional development at work.
As noted above, hospitality management offerings paper's author currently receives inadequately covers non-verbal communication, let alone body language, skills becoming increasingly required in hospitality industry. The lack of proper body language training in formal education context mandates, accordingly, more exposure to body language experiences in order for paper's author to gain required skills. The case study of Affinia represents a leading example of formalizing body language into corporate training programs. Still, no formal training is offered, as far as one knows, on nuances of body language usage and interpretation in hospitality industry.
As a manager in a hospitality context, one would formalize body language training as an increasingly important component of service quality in current hospitality business ecosystem. Tapping into day-to-day staff experiences, one would build, gradually, a repository of body language incidents involving staff-customer encounters. This repository would serve as an initial step to updating staff, in regular meetings, of learning experiences which should be shared company-wide. The proposed repository could also serve as a marketing tool. By emphasizing positives, one would enhance corporate image as staff members are shown to cater for customer needs. Not least, formalized body language learning experiences could be shared with new comers in order to establish institutional learning among different line managers.
CONCLUSION
There are, of course, many other different ways by which hospitality industry can better understand customers, body language is only most recent of which. The growing importance of body language is, accordingly, only one indication, albeit a more powerful one, of changing practices in hospitality industry. If adopted properly, customers can be satisfied in different, more creative ways. The evolution of body language training programs in hospitality industry remains to be tested in long range practice. Finally, body language is, like any other service component in hospitality industry, an evolving concept which would assume different meanings and applications as customers, particularly younger ones of rapidly changing consumption patterns, experience different service offerings.
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