Great service organizations know how to read their customers and respond.  Businesses who lose sight or misunderstand who their customers are, what they want, or what matters most to them, are at risk. Focused service organizations train their employees to notice customer body language, to observe the surroundings for all customer touch points, and how to REACT and RESPOND with informed knowledge. Holding employees accountable for this level of service is what makes the difference. "The secret to world-class service is knowing the true customer and aligning all participating resources and people with the value stream that leads to that customer." -John Murphy

What ProSolutions has learned about pricing in the last 9 years while doing competitive pricing analysis for hotels is that to capture your fair share in your competitive set, knowledge is power. There are so many factors that need to be considered and understood when deciding to lower or raise your prices. Knowing when to vary pricing to match demand patterns, and when to drive revenue and profits need to be key components of your operating strategy. Building a sustainable revenue stream is built by proper pricing strategies that drive revenue both in the short-term and long-term.

Pricing optimization can be tricky in many cases since the market can change daily, as well as seasonally, and you need to have analytics to make these decisions. When the market started to crash several years ago, profitable hotel companies capitalized on understanding exactly where they sat with their competitive set by focusing on incremental revenue- "found" revenue based on this knowledge.

Said by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, "The Rule of expectations uses expectations to influence reality and create results." The problems that are encountered are when people fulfill these expectations negatively. Why is this? We all make decisions based on what others expect of us. If you are a clear and precise communicator, disciplined to the point of ensuring your expectations are completely understood both in principle and delivery, then this blog is probably not going to highlight much for you. However, for the many of us in the customer service world, both as a provider and/or a consumer, there seems to be lots of room for improvement.

In the grand scheme of things, service is service, right? Or is it? The degrees to which successful and unsuccessful service is delivered has varying effects on the outcomes. The service industry provides many levels of delivery outcomes. The range can be dramatic. For example: a rude cashier at the 7-11 is annoying while a rude floor nurse not focusing on details is far from annoying- the outcome of this lack of service can be life threatening. So the questions is, "Is it right to expect less from the cashier than we do the floor nurse with regards to service?" The universal answer has arrived at "yes," but perhaps therein lies the service mishaps. How can we develop consistencies in service expectations?  Let's take a look at three industries with separate service challenges, their insights, and comments to three questions. From their perspectives and expert opinions we should be able to gather some overall standards which should be applied across every employee role in every industry.

Lately, to my disappointment, I have not encountered near enough notable customer service exchanges. In fact, quite the opposite ~ until the other day! My daughter recently had surgery and her surgical pre-op nurse demonstrated service at it's finest. It was obvious that this person operates naturally from a place of compassion, but she was also textbook perfect with her service delivery ~ and in my world, with what I do for a living, I don't use that "perfect" word very often. 

Happy New Year to all! What will 2015 bring? July 3, 1985, the movie, Back to the Future hit the theaters, and the year of the future in this movie was 2015. So, welcome to the future ladies and gentlemen! 

As many do each New Year, I too, fall into considering change, a better self, and what improvements do I need to make to ensure a better me! For me personally, it is not about New Year resolutions necessarily, it's more about a new vision for the New Year. The beginning of a New Year is refreshing because it gives you permission for all sorts of new decisions that somehow don't happen as easily once the year is in full swing. One of my new visions for 2015 is to read more each day. So who better to inspire my vision for reading, than the inspiration king himself, Zig Ziglar.