The Focus of the Online Courses

The difference between the Heart-Based Hospitality courses and typical Customer Service courses is very simple. Customer Service courses provide (excellent) guidance for people in general customer service situations, which includes hotels, shops, airlines, and businesses in general. They provide strategies and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for when you deal with customers so that you satisfy your customers and so that they support your business and stay loyal to it. Heart-Based Hospitality does this and much more.

The diagram below shows the Experience Ladder. Customer Service guidance focuses on the level called Services. Heart-Based Hospitality creates a guest experience and customer experience at the three levels above Services. The concept was created for hotels and restaurants and for any business that provides hospitality to customers, but it can also be applied to shops and other businesses where employees interact face-to-face with customers. The concept is also very beneficial for Sales & Marketing employees. (See further down the page for an explanation of The Experience Ladder.)

Heart-Based Hospitality is an energetic and spiritual concept of hospitality. It provides a completely new direction in hospitality for the hotel industry. While it focuses on hospitality, it is very relevant to the general business customer experience. It is based on love, particularly loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care, which are the forgotten essence of hospitality. By working with energy, especially heart energy, and by developing the spiritual capacity of the hotel staff you can create limitless levels of hospitality far above the traditional 5-Star, SOP-Customer Satisfaction ceiling. As you develop Heart-Based Hospitality you can increase the softness, gentleness, loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care of the staff and the energetic warmth of the hospitality without limit.

I created the concept of Heart-Based Hospitality for the hotel industry. One day, when the hotel industry discovers that everything is made of energy and that love (loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care) is the essence of hospitality, the concept will revolutionise the hospitality industry. The website at www.heartbasedhospitality.com explains all of this so I won’t repeat it here.

In short, if you want guidance about customer service, Customer Service courses will serve you admirably. But if you want to create a hospitality experience that is infused with special energy and which is strong in loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care, the 11 Heart-Based Hospitality courses will serve you better. They will transform you (and your colleagues) and create in you a growing desire to show these core values of hospitality to everyone you meet while at the same time increasing your spiritual capacity to infuse your guest- and customer-related activities with these core values.

Click here for more information about the essence of Heart-Based Hospitality.

An Explanation of the Experience Ladder 

In short, the Experience ladder shows you how customer service has evolved over the decades. We can use the example of making bakery items to explain it. We’ll start at the bottom level, Raw Materials.

Raw Materials

• Many years ago, if you wanted to make bread you would have to go to a shop (or even to various shops) to buy the ingredients.

Goods

• Then another level of service arrived in which the goods were available already made. So, you could buy bread already made. The range of bread was usually very limited.

Services (SOP-Customer Satisfaction)

• The level of Goods was improved with the arrival of supermarkets that provide a wide variety of goods, such as bread. Some supermarket chains are now extending this level of service to include the facility of ordering online and either having your food items, such as bread in this example, delivered to your home or ready for you to collect. This level is equivalent to SOP-Customer Satisfaction because it is created by following operational standards and procedures (SOPs).

Memorable Experiences

• Many areas of business and organisations then realised that simply providing efficiency and high standards was not enough, and so the focus turned to providing their products not just according to high standards, but also in a truly memorable way. They started to make buying from them a memorable experience. So, for example, when you go into a bakery, everything will be freshly baked; there will be a wonderful range of items and tastes; bakery smells will fill the bakery; and the presentation will be very attractive. You would be able to sit at a table and drink tea or coffee at the same time.

Dreams Come True

• This is the next level and already some businesses are not just creating a memorable experience, but they are also making doing business with them like a dream come true. This involves touching the hearts of the customers and making them feel like they dream of feeling. This is an important aspect of this level. At this level, the experience has moved beyond just providing efficient service to providing hospitality that is strong in loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care.
• Using the example of the bakery, the staff would be strong in the core spiritual values of hospitality (loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care) and they would provide hospitality that makes you feel how you would love to feel.
• There would be some beautiful, gentle music playing in the bakery; the decor would be beautiful; there would be a wide range of bakery products and bread; the flavour of every bakery product would be a memorable experience; the presentation of the items would be very attractive; and there might be an area with books and sofas or floor cushions where you could eat the bakery products while drinking tea or coffee and reading a book, and even stroking a cat. Here is an example of a cat café, the Caturday Cafe in Bangkok.

Transformation

• This is an ever-increasing extension of “Dreams Come True” where the whole experience is at a level that makes you feel spiritually or physically rejuvenated. You feel changed by the experience that combines the staff’s loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care; the gentle music; the smells and presentation of the bakery products; the comfort and decor provided by the bakery; and perhaps also by the presence of loving cats lazing on the sofas where you drink the coffee and eat the bakery products. When you leave the bakery, you feel transformed.