7 Common Communication Pitfalls that Hotel Staff Suffers From

7 Common Communication Pitfalls that Hotel Staff Suffers From

Imagine a world where you spend all the time and effort to assemble the best team in the business. Thanks to a combination of shrewd hiring, detailed training and sometimes luck, you have built a hotel staff that is, with nary a misstep, firing on all cylinders. It’s taken a ton of resources to do so, but you know that the extra work will yield results and create a superior customer experience.

But now imagine that your team lacks the tools to establish effective workplace communication. All of a sudden your potential feels greatly diminished, doesn’t it? Despite your clear objective, there’s no longer any way to achieve your higher goal.

That’s the importance of communication in the workplace. Even if you’ve done everything right, you’re destined to fall short of your goals. And, in a world like hospitality that hinges so heavily on customer service, the impact on your work is sure to be even greater.

Without a doubt, problems will arise, but there is something you can do to combat the many communication issues you’ll face in the workplace. However, you can’t solve these problems without first identifying them. So let’s run through some of the most common communication pitfalls hotel staff like yours might suffer from.

Delayed Communication

When you’re in the midst of a busy workday, you count on your team’s ability to connect at a moment’s notice and take action fast. Whether it’s an emergency situation or merely a guest need that has to be met as soon as possible, it’s key to any effective communication system that you be able to reach your staff and teammates instantly.

After all, this is why walkie talkies have remained the standard throughout the hospitality industry for so long. If you aren’t able to move quickly and decisively, then what is the point in investing the money in a communication tool at all? Without the ability to communicate instantly, you’re only slowing down your own productivity and dragging down your team’s capability to get the job efficiently and effectively.

 

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While walkie talkies and other two-way radios do generally solve the problem, they carry their own issues, which we’ll get to in a bit. However, technology has come a long way since their time as the go-to piece of equipment for staff communication.

You have a lot more to consider in today’s day and age. For example, a walkie talkie app eliminates the need for your team to lug around bulky extra equipment and maintains that key distinction that you need in order for your team to work together like the well-oiled machine you designed it to be.

Of course, delayed communication is only one of the persistent problems you’ll come across as you manage your hotel staff.

Miscommunication

Delayed communication is one thing, but miscommunication can be just as disastrous. If one teammate needs to reach another, the message can often become difficult to hear, read or otherwise understand. Chalk it up to a weak signal, garbled speech due to interference or just the fallibility of your outdated technology.

Whatever the case may be, there’s no point in having the ability to connect to your staff (and for them to reach each other) if you cannot be sure that the message will be intact once it reaches its intended target. Sure, miscommunication can happen even without the technical difficulties you might have to deal with, but then that makes it all the more critical that you minimize the opportunity for things to go awry.

To sidestep potential miscommunication, you need a solution in place that is able to maintain a secure signal and ensure that both parties are able to transmit messages without cutting out or being invaded by feedback noises and other interruptions.

In many cases, that means that traditional tools like walkie talkies may not be the best answer.

But the right mobile app, which retains the key features of a two-way radio, could ensure that your teammates are able to get their message across quickly and accurately. Clarity is key in any form of communication, and in the context of your hotel staff, it means the difference between accomplishing your goals or continually falling short.

Missed Messages

Okay, so we’ve covered delayed communications and miscommunication. But what about when you try and reach out to one of your teammates, you fail to connect and so you leave a voice message? Who’s to say that this message will ever even reach the other end? Regardless of how much technology has advanced, we still find ourselves sometimes confronted with the mysterious case of the missing message.

 

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If you don’t have the right solution in place, you might wind up sending a voice message and waiting in vain for a response that will never arrive. Granted, this isn’t an issue so much with traditional walkie talkies — which rely on instant communication in order to make a connection — but it’s a concern nonetheless for many other popular forms of communication.

Whether it’s email or phone systems, you need to ensure that any and all messages sent among your teammates actually get where they’re supposed to go. To do that, you need a system that offers features like read receipts and the like.

This will provide the peace of mind you need to stay focused on the task at hand. If your teammate has already received your message, you don’t have to worry about any additional delays and won’t have to doubt that a technical glitch undermined the course of your duty, creating unnecessary issues throughout your staff and the normally fast-paced workday.

Limited Mobility

While walkie talkies provide the potential for you to face delayed communication and miscommunication (thereby slowing your team’s progress), there’s another set of problems you will run into with other solutions like phone calls and emails. Chief among this is the limited mobility.

If your staff is forced to turn to wired phone systems and desktop computers to stay connected throughout the course of the day, then that means they’re remaining stationary, chained to their desks instead of getting the work done. As you know, running a hotel involves a lot of movement, coordinating various team members to keep the place running in top shape and checking on guests to ensure that everything meets their needs. Standing still waiting for messages to come in isn’t part of the job description.

That’s where mobile technology comes in. With a walkie talkie app, you can combine the best of both worlds: the efficiency and mobility of two-way radios with the accuracy and clarity of phones and email systems.

Your staff will no longer be forced to choose between receiving (and understanding) a message and tending to their work. Now more than ever, you need to stay active and get as much done as humanly possible during the course of every single business day. You can’t afford immobility to stand in your way.

Costly Equipment

When it comes to managing any hotel, you always have to contend with the matter of cost. How do you make the most impact with the least amount of expense? It’s a tricky question, to be sure, especially considering how vital a reliable communication system is.

Traditional solutions like walkie talkies, phones, and computer systems, however, all have one thing in common: they can be very costly. Consider the fact that you need to outfit your entire staff with these devices and be prepared to replace any elements that become damaged or break entirely. Even if your team is able to stay connected (and we’ve already addressed above the inherent problems in that assumption), you’re facing a potentially insurmountable hit to your bottom line.

A mobile app solves this problem handily though. Because it’s installed on any smart device — more than likely ipods and ipads — you don’t have to worry about bringing in any bulky and/or expensive equipment. Moreover, the cost is restricted simply to this one resource.

No worries about replacements or any impending damage. You’ll be able to enjoy the pure benefits of this system without any of the hardships of its predecessors. Plus, you’ll be able to direct the funds you would otherwise be spending on walkie talkies to other aspects of your business, setting the stage for future growth.

Incompatible Systems

Because technology has become such a prominent force in our everyday lives, there are a number of systems that we can turn to in order to help our businesses (and our staffs) on schedule and on task. The downside to this, of course, is that compatibility becomes a possible worry. In order to effectively combat this, you need a communication tool that integrates with all kinds of systems.

In the case of a walkie talkie app, this means a mobile product that works with all of the most prominent operating systems, such as iPhone, Android and (of course) the web itself. This protects the connectivity of your team by ensuring that every staff member has the ability to stay in touch with the smart devices they already have and handily prevents you from needing to invest in additional equipment. Keeping costs low and maximizing your efficiency has never been so easy.

 

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No Archives

Remember how we said earlier that missed messages can be a real trouble spot? Well, allow us to elaborate on that. Not only can your staff completely miss important messages from you or other members of your team, but without an archive to save and store these messages, there’s no record for you to reference.

You won’t be able to look back and ascertain whether a message was sent, troubleshoot where the problem lies and evaluate the failure of your staff to get a task done in a timely manner. In short, you’d be managing your team half-blind, with no opportunity to reprimand careless behavior amongst your staff or discover ways to avoid the situation going forward. Thankfully (you guessed it), a walkie talkie app has you covered here as well.

Communication Breakdown

While the above problems are bound to recur now and again, you shouldn’t simply deal with them as they come up and expect them to resolve themselves. These issues are the result of underlying complications in your back-end systems, and as we’ve demonstrated, a lack of communication in the workplace can wreak havoc on your productivity and drastically complicate your ability to connect with customers. If you want to truly live up to your potential as a business and as a team, you’ll need to be proactive and find efficient and effective ways to improve communication in the workplace.

Inevitably, it falls to you to set the tone for your team. So, to address the most common communication obstacles, you’ll need to remain vigilant. That means listening to your staff’s feedback, opening the floor to their suggestions and then translating both through the prism of your own management style to deliver the solutions they need. When your team has effective communication systems in place, they’re better able to do their jobs, and that positive performance is guaranteed to pass on to your customers.

If you have any lingering doubts as to why communication is so important in the workplace, remember the ripple effect it creates. And, if you’re ready to discover the difference that a walkie talkie app can make on your hotel staff, just let us know.

 

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