Are you Hospitable?

by | Jun 6, 2024 | Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, Moment of Truth

This month we celebrate National Pineapple Day (6/27) and since a pineapple is the universal symbol of hospitality, I wanted to take a deeper dive into what it really means to be hospitable and the way it makes people feel.

The dictionary defines hospitality as: being friendly and welcoming to guests and visitors.

It sounds so easy. This should be an innate skill we all possess.

So why do so many people miss the mark?

Some ideas are:

  • We let our personal stressors get in the way of our job performance
  • We don’t handle stress of the job/high volume/demands of customers well
  • We are bored at work and bad habits have formed
  • We have a supervisor/manager who isn’t leading by example
  • We aren’t paid well and do the bare minimum as a result
  • We lack the self-awareness to know how we are perceived by others
  • We forget to treat others how we would want to be treated or aren’t aware of the endless ways to foster meaningful connections

Let’s use an example from a recent visit to a new coffee shop. I paid $8 for a fancy iced decaf americano and it was delicious. But the service fell short in a big way and I won’t return.

  • When I approached the cashier, the barista didn’t make eye contact or greet me and instead was scrolling on their phone
  • When I was surveying their unique drink menu, they didn’t ask if I had any questions or needed a recommendation
  • When I finally asked a question about a drink add-on, I was given the bare minimum response of “yeah, you could do that.”
  • When my order was ready and I was the ONLY customer waiting for a drink (because nobody else had walked in), they called out my drink name and left it on the far side of the counter, instead of gesturing to me (or walking it over) to the table I was seated at 5 feet away.

I have to imagine that this barista came to work hoping to be hospitable, to be friendly and welcoming to all guests who entered.

Next time you or a fellow team member isn’t being hospitable, hold them accountable, but even more importantly dig deeper into the why (as listed above).

Happy National Pineapple Day!