Institutionalize Your Hospitality
Through the years, I’ve been asked a variation of this question: Should a church’s guest services team function more organically or more according to a specified plan? In other words, should we just “let hospitality happen” or should we strategize to make sure it happens?
I believe that to be a classic chicken-or-the-egg question, and to answer it, I think we should turn to the people who know a thing or two about chickens.
In his book Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A: How Faith, Cows, and Chicken Built an Iconic Brand, Steve Robinson says it like this:
…service is the way you deliver the meal – the presentation, the consistency, the quality. Hospitality is how you add value after the meal has been delivered – the second mile. Hospitality goes beyond just successfully, accurately, personably delivering the meal and adds connection … It seems counterintutive to “institutionalize” hospitality, and yet people need the right tools for consistent expression.
We might disagree on a few things about Chick-fil-A (their discontinued breakfast platter remains one of the great corporate betrayals of my lifetime), but we can unite on this fact: they have institutionalized hospitality like few other brands. If you take away Chick-fil-A’s fastidious fascination with customer service, you’re left with a decent chicken sandwich, but you’ve lost so much more.
And while you can get a decent chicken sandwich at any number of places, you often choose to go to Chick-fil-A because there’s something intangible that is baked into the whole experience.
Do I think that the institutionalization of hospitality can be overdone? Do I think sometimes it can feel “too corporate“? Of course I do. But I’ll take a perfunctory “My pleasure” over a mumbling McDonald’s employee any old day.
In our context, we say it this way: “Guest Services isn’t just a team we have, it’s who we are.” We don’t want it to be one more thing we do on a Sunday morning, we want it to be woven into our DNA.
So don’t be shy about institutionalizing your hospitality. Don’t be afraid to implement a playbook. Don’t be bashful about setting a standard and holding your team to it. Your guests deserve it…and they’ll take notice of it.
