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HomeRegional NewsEurope“Good with room for improvement” are results of Sidona’s south west Customer Experience survey
Visitors think that businesses need to focus on improving staff skills

“Good with room for improvement” are results of Sidona’s south west Customer Experience survey

Devon based customer experience experts Sidona Group have released the results of a survey which reveals just how consumers rate the customer experience in hospitality businesses in the (SW). The survey has been released to tie in with NCSW. The results are clear – although the SW comes out top in terms of delivering the UK’s best customer experience (with 57% voting the region top), there is still a great deal of ‘room for improvement’.

The survey also showed that visitors to hotels, eateries and attractions across the SW think that businesses need to focus on improving staff skills and how staff interact with them (57% saying these could be improved) before they focus on any product changes (just 16%) in order for the business to deliver a better customer experience.

“We specifically surveyed this group of consumers on their overall visitor experience, and not just customer service, as in today’s tough economic climate the visitor experience is often the difference between failure and success for tourism businesses,” comments Anne Blackburn, customer experience director, Sidona Group.

Customer experience is based on a balance of product (‘is the quality good enough’), senses (‘how does it look/smell/sound’) and emotional reaction (‘how does it make me feel’). Over 50% of a consumer’s experience comes from the emotional reaction, proving just how vital it is that businesses take their customers’ feelings and reactions into account if they are going to turn them into loyal advocates.

“Our survey takes an in-depth look at how consumers’ think leisure and hospitality businesses across the region are doing when it comes to catering to their emotional and physical needs,” continues Anne. “Whilst we are doing well, there is still clear room for improvement, and these improvements can easily turn into better profits.

“Customer experience experts globally have long said that consumers want a better experience not just a better product, so it is interesting to see that consumers’ responses chime with this belief.  So many tourism businesses will heavily invest in new product (new carpets, IT systems, menus etc) before they consider the much more modest, and profitable, investment in reviewing how they up skill their people to deliver a great customer experience.  In our opinion, this is a fundamental mistake.”

As a result of the survey, Sidona has pinpointed two key areas for leisure businesses who want to maximise financial returns to work on. 

The first area involves developing skills in customer management.  To make the leap from good to excellent all staff must be shown how to make better emotional connections with customers and to understand why this is important.

The second is the need for businesses to research not only what their customers are saying and feel about them but also to research what customers would like to see them do differently. What do customers think businesses need to implement to make the experience they deliver stand out from the crowd?

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Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.

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