Top Ten Quotes: Excellence Wins
Anybody in the hospitality space knows who Horst Schulze is. As the cofounder and former president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Schulze knows a thing or two about treating people with dignity and class. He is a first-class leader, an inspiring figure, and a committed Christ-follower.
I’ve heard him interviewed on multiple podcasts, so I was excited when he put all of his best stories and leadership counsel in one fantastic book. Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise released earlier this summer, and you need it in your hands.
Here are my top ten favorite quotes:
- Customer service starts the instant you make contact with an individual.
- …if a customer’s first four contacts with our hotel go well (for example, the phone reservation clerk, the doorman, the bellman, and the front desk), there will be virtually no complaints thereafter.
- Service always implies caring.
- …there is nothing beautiful in an “explanation.” Beauty lies rather in innovation – figuring out how to overcome the challenges and press on to success, to customer pleasure, to achievement.
- Believe it or not, a customer or client frustration can become an opportunity to create new loyalty. What is loyalty? Simply a feeling of trust.
- Keep doing whatever it takes to serve the guest. (This is one of 24 Service Standards. You should buy the book just for those seven pages.)
- …a onetime orientation speech [is] not enough.
- Whenever I do an orientation, I always pray that at least one person will “get it” – that they’ll take what I’ve said and internalize it and then go out and apply it for their future.
- I won’t settle for less than the vision. No excuses allowed, either from myself or those who work with me.
- The old phrase “we’ve never done it that way before” has no place in a healthy organization. Innovation is often squelched in the name of tradition.
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