Warmth is a commodity that can be well monetized

The best German employer, multiple award-winning hospitality expert Klaus Kobjoll, claims in his book ‘Warmth as a Commodity’ that anyone can enhance service quality and competitiveness without significant investment. Sometimes it’s about a welcome with a glass of champagne, a weather forecast placed on the pillow in a hotel room, or a list of radar controls in the vicinity…

writes Tatjana Brebrić
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One of the most important criteria for the purchasing decision is the emotional reaction, and there are two main ways to evoke a strong emotional response from one’s customers – one is extremely expensive, and the other costs almost nothing. At least that’s what the best German employer in hospitality, Klaus Kobjoll, thinks, who shares his experiences in creating a successful hospitality business in his book ‘Warmth as a Commodity’. Kobjoll is known in Germany for the success he achieved with his congress hotel Schindlerhof, which is a multiple award-winning top hotel. For his work on building service in that hotel, Kobjoll and his team have received many awards, including seven times for the best congress hotel in Germany and twice the largest German marketing award. Among the many ideas that Kobjoll considers key to success in management, perhaps the most interesting are those about raising service quality. This German hotelier believes that an emotional experience can only be evoked in the customer in two ways. The first is strong external stimuli – in the case of hotels, these are a large number of stars, fabulously large wellness centers, spacious golf courses, and incredibly arranged interiors.

– At the beginning of the year, in January, I always hold a seminar in a hotel in Scotland, 100 kilometers north of Edinburgh. On its own property, the hotel offers four golf courses with 18 holes, has its own track for Land Rovers, an Olympic-sized riding center, and its own falconry school where 15 falcons are just waiting for you to go hunting with them. These are strong external stimuli. Of course, this is effective, only – I cannot afford it – explains Kobjoll, who suggests to everyone who, like him, cannot afford such expensive sources of emotion to attract their clients in another way.

Full of ‘secret touches’

For the ‘secret touch’, as he calls it, everyone has money, because it involves ‘soft’ factors, that is, little things that communicate warmth. Whether it’s a welcome with a glass of champagne, or a weather forecast for the next few days placed on the pillow in the room, or a list of radar controls in the vicinity that you receive when leaving the restaurant after a glass of wine. Such little things, details that are the same for all clients, generally require minimal financial investment, and although such a detail cannot be an advantage in the market competition by itself, the sum of all these details is a strategic position for success. However, the story of stimulating customer emotions does not stop there. With the help of CRM (customer relationship management) tools, relationships with clients can be built even better. Building friendships can, in fact, be divided into three phases, claims Kobjoll. In the first phase, it’s about small gifts and compliments, about a welcome drink. In the second phase, the friendship grows, because thanks to monitoring the guest, there is already knowledge, or awareness of their preferences and even whims. The third phase is achieved only when a good acquaintance is established, that is, when a certain level of closeness is achieved.

– The third level is not needed by every industry, but it is certainly needed in gastronomy. The highest level of friendship arises only when you know each other well, when closeness is already permitted. In that category, we have 30 to 35 percent of guests. Last winter, we brought a wooden bowl with a hot bubbly foot bath to such a guest after his arrival. He had been sitting in a car for eight hours, and we offered him a foot bath. But for such a thing, you must know the guest well – explains Kobjoll.

Top job and salary

Relationships, of course, are not built overnight, but it is also not realistic to expect that such relationships will be built by employees who are not motivated. Namely, a person can lift the corners of their mouth, and it will resemble a smile, but if it is just a learned movement, and the smile does not come from within, if employees are only satisfied, it will not work well. – Satisfied customers, ladies and gentlemen, are still too few. They may come back, but they will not recommend us further. You only pass the test if you have enthusiastic clients. And for that, we must first excite our employees so that the spark of enthusiasm transfers to others – says Kobjoll. Although he lists many ways in his book that employers can successfully motivate and lead their employees, perhaps the most useful advice concerns the relationship between service quality and employee motivation, which can be reflected in various problems that arise in Croatian service industries (but also in many other sectors). One of the important factors, of course, is also decent employee salaries.

– If you pay your employees peanuts, you will be surrounded by monkeys – is a very memorable and appropriate sentence from Kobjoll explaining that it is not realistic to expect top-notch work if those who perform it are not adequately compensated. The issue of salaries, of course, is not the only one to consider. Little things that cannot be bought with money are also important in this case and do not depend solely on management. A small ritual on the first working day, a thank-you letter before the annual vacation, a chocolate after returning from vacation, a small ritual for a birthday, and a Christmas party are not significant factors in the company’s finances. The benefits they can bring if done systematically, on the other hand, are enormous.

Small know, but big?

– Some companies fear that if they start such rituals, they will always have to do more and more. No, such a practice will not become worn out. If your friends invite you to dinner for the tenth time, you will come and bring flowers, right? And the host will not say: ‘Here he is again with flowers. Doesn’t he have a better idea?’ No, they are happy, that’s part of the culture, that’s how we treat each other. And you will quickly notice: if you are kind to others, you will receive more in return. Then, there is no longer a discussion about working hours based on trust, nor about overtime. Because you yourself are more generous – explains Kobjoll.

Kind employees, their warmth is the dot over the ‘i’ that yields results. That service quality is a better comparative advantage than price, many have already convinced themselves through experience. Small businesses are very skilled in this – in the neighborhood store, most customers know their name, and the local butcher will just check if he needs to remove the bones from the chops again this time. Medium-sized companies just need to master all these skills. – The result will be undeniable! I would bet my hand in the fire. You must, however, be consistent. You must not have a single capricious person in a team of 100 people. They will always be on duty when the most complicated client calls or when a complaint arises. That one capricious person will ruin everything that 100 people have tried to build throughout the year – claims Kobjoll.

The conclusion is simple – warmth is a commodity that you can well monetize, but it does not come by itself. Warmth requires significant investments that are not financial. Warmth requires effort, primarily from management. And it is up to management to decide whether small financial investments pay off with large financial returns, or if it is simpler to invest money to earn more money.