So…Sonterra…. Create Value for People

Evening is falling here. I am sitting in a hotel room, in front of the window, on the 18th floor. This hotel is majestically built and located by the Red Sea. I am looking at the bright yellow sun of the evening, going away and away in the magical waters of the red sea. The sun is going away, after a long day of work to spread it’s sunshine on earth, the sun is trying to wash its face. Water ripples and sun rays are hugging and kissing.

The music, the piano, the fireworks of hugs and kisses is taking away my loneliness. I am smiling. The Nature and evening is awesome. Just beau…. so sonterra.

Since my last visit in August, the hotel has gone through a major refurbishment. There are new carpets, new furniture, new décor in the lobbies, etc., It seems to me the new owner has tried to give a refreshing look to the hotel interiors.

From all this change and refurbishment done in the hotel, there is something really missing. That is the only thing that really matters in this industry. The focus on the customer service is missing. It has not gone through any change. The same smile, same words to greet, in the same old tone, by the same staff.

The manager is not available when I want to speak to him to demand a non-smoking room, which is always booked by my local office. The reception staff says that all the non-smoking rooms are booked, due to some trade show going on in the city. I am not happy. I ask to see the manager. He is not available. In my opinion, he should be available to take care of his customer’s needs. To me, he must be visible everywhere in the hotel and personally looking after his internal and external customers. He must be creating value for both. He should provide me the desired room.

The service boy just walked me to my room, told me how to use the electric switches and how to use the TV remote. Then he started reviewing my luggage and me, like he was making an assessment of how much tip I can afford to pay him.

In my opinion, the manager should be walking around and showing the customers and his staff that he has all the time in the world, to talk to them and listen to their requests. He should be walking around and shaking hands. The effect would be absolutely “electric”. It is the courtesy the guest will never forget, even if he did not get his desired room.

It may seem corny to many executives and administratively minded people, but to the staff, shaking hands with their manager, is a “high-powered” experience. Take care of your staff and they will take care of your customers.

Also the customers are not troops to be reviewed; they are people to serve and the best way to serve your customers is to roll up your sleeves and do the awesome job. The managers, that do not understand customer value, are no good at running businesses. They think the business is just a big machine that runs on money. They do not understand that a business is real people, creating value for other real people. If you understand that, you can make almost any business succeed.

A few years back, I was in Bangkok, Thailand. In Thailand they literally practice; “There is no higher religion than serving people or their customers.” My hotel had sent a car to pick me up from the airport. The driver asked me, “what kind of music I would love to listen to?” At the hotel, I did not have to go to the reception desk; rather I was ushered away, directly to a greeting lobby, where I was served fresh pineapple juice. The girl who was a middle level manager (I later learned) sat next to me and asked me about my flight and if everything went smooth at the airport and about the ride from the airport.

She walked with me to my room and surprisingly asked me, if I would like a foot massage? My instantaneous reaction was a big “NO and Thank You”.

She insisted. She said; that it will take away the flight tiredness. I was convinced, I retracted and said “Being a writer I cannot say no to good ideas and being a businessman cannot say no to good deals,” She smiled. Asked me to sit on the sofa, she took off my shoes, socks and gave a foot massage that was transcription of every word she said.

With this service gesture, she ensured she had sold the services of her hotel to me for the rest of my life.

The attitudes of service leaderships are different, normally and traditionally inculcated into managers. I would say, more than usual, in the male managers. The “testosterone factor” typically conditions males to think in terms of authority, control, and compliance, rather than in terms of ownership, enabling and sweetness.

However, in today’s global economy, more and more managers, both male and female, are moving toward a broader and more versatile view of their roles and are finding it comfortable to think in terms of leading through service.

I love Sao Paulo. It is a city of 18 million people and is an industrial and financial center of Brazil, adding 30% to GNP of the country (9th largest in the world).

As a company tradition, I take the whole staff to dinner at least once a year. Sao Paulo is a center of business activities for all of South America. It turns into a party place as the night starts falling. This year the venue for company dinner was a Turkish Restaurant. We decided to sit outside, a pretty romantic venue for dinner under the stars. The weather was just beautiful for it in the month of November.

Starting with traditional Castilian food was a great way to get into the rhythm of the local way of eating. The delicious food was served quickly and we took our time to fancy cholesterol, calories and caffeine. The owner and manager visited us a few times to know if everything was going fine and if we were enjoying our meal and time at his place. He expressed his gratitude by honoring us with a plaque that we had a dinner on his place at such and such date. When I was taking care of the bill he came out again and announced that he will be paying service charges on our behalf. I said, “NO,” but he insisted. I believe this is crossing limits in “service excellence”. I have no more words for this excellence in creating “A customer value”. This was unprecedented in the history of my travel experiences.

The flight from Sao Paulo to Zurich and to the Red sea city was anything but long, long and long. Whenever I looked at the flight path on the screen, I felt like singing “Phil Collins,” “long-long way to go.” Both the airlines used for this flight has done a tremendous job of focusing on the customer service, in the recent years. In the class I was traveling, they made sure their customers were served with rolled up sleeves.

On the flight, I slept a lot and watched some movies, I wrote thank you notes to the staff in Sao Paulo, for their services in the current year and making it a successful year. Wishing everyone the best of everything, prosperity and happiness for the next year and for the many years to come. I read some magazines and Jackie Collins new best seller novel “The Hollywood Wives” The New Breed. She is an excellent writer on this kind of feminist soap drama, I must say.

Brazil is very similar to my love and native country Pakistan in many respects. In Pakistan, we were trying to develop a market for center pivot irrigation systems and water saving technologies in the fourth largest irrigated country of the world.

In Brazil, if you are a friend there is everything for you but if you are a stranger, there is nothing for you. For strangers all the rules and regulations will apply. In Pakistan you can add to it “that it is not what you know which counts but who you know is what really counts.

The capital city, Islamabad is a place where life is lazy, where nobody really cares about time, and everybody is interested in what everybody else is doing. It is the place without Pakistan, because the Pakistan starts after 15 minutes of driving away from the city. You will love the cleanliness, the order of planning, except the street signs (because one can never understand how you can have street number 43 in front of street number 17, any engineering student will tell you that you go odd or even numbers or make it simple just go parallel, “it’s a no brainer”).

The capital has late night hang out places as well. The weather is just gorgeous all around the year. It is a city of large boulevards, expansive parks, tall trees, and a lot of spare space to stroll. Around the city, you can explore some of the world’s most dramatic scenery. If you are like most folks, you are more likely to pull out the camera to take snaps. The vibrancy and variety of the city surroundings can seduce you with its beauty. Sometimes you just say, “my God lands couldn’t be prettier…trees and shrubs turn lush green during the rainy season, the whole city turns into a big park, surrounded by mountains and rolling hills on all sides, the vistas seems to go on forever.

I must add that city is trying to discover itself socially and culturally and one day it will. You can learn to tango, and discover for yourself one of the most exciting cities on earth.

Islamabad has a sophisticated, genteel northern influence…but it is as cosmopolitan as other cities of the world.

With the human touch and with some customer service focus, the smart managers can create value for customers and poetic balance, even while dealing with the money. At the bank in Islamabad, I was served by my account manager beyond my expectations.

The service industry is learning together and creating value for their customers, wherever it is, be it in Brazil, be it in Thailand and be it in Pakistan, the managers are rapidly coming to the realization that customer focus must be the cornerstone of any organization’s way of doing business. Where a manager announce to take care of the service charges on behalf of you, or serve you a coffee or a pineapple juice in Thailand, they are building customers to last and creating organizations to last, no matter where and no matter what technological advances are brought to any industry, at any place.

Where the customer focused employee asked you how everything is going while you are having a dinner under the stars at his restaurant in Sao Paulo, or a middle level manager in a hotel in Bangkok asked you how was your flight and give you a foot massage, or the service representative of a bank in Islamabad asked you if you were served while waiting, they are all doing their jobs to add value to their organizations. There is an old Jewish proverb, “Business is what, if you don’t have it, you go out of it.”

So…….Sonterra….Life goes on under the sun on this land, surrounded by waters. “Refocus, make yourself useful and create value for people of the world.