| The Personal Touch…
I have been lucky enough to have been part of this blossoming family business for around 6 years now and have recently taken on the official role of marketing director as of this year. I am learning a whole new side to Stuart Line Cruise and to be honest I absolutely love it! How many people do you know that can say they genuinely look forward to each working day? Obviously that sounds horrendously ‘cheesy’ but what can I say? This isn’t a Monday to Friday grind and it isn’t a 5pm sharp exit from the office. It isn’t a set routine and there is so much that I am yet to learn – I am kept on my toes and every day is different and every day, I manage to find fun in what I do. And that really is what it’s all about, isn’t it? Life is too short not to have fun.
Which leads me on to my main point here…
(Incidentally, I had thought that January and February would be quiet times when I took on this role – time to reflect, take things a bit easy and slowly get to know the role but I was quite wrong and I would like to share with you one of my most recent (very positive) experiences).
Reflection is fundamental – in every day life, in business and in leisure and it’s an ongoing process. We reflect subconsciously in our thoughts and actually, this monthly edit presents to me the perfect opportunity for me to reflect. It can be applied to friendships, relationships and all areas of professional life – we are never perfect and nothing is ever flawless but we must want to improve. This progressive movement is what makes us grow and is how we can ‘be better’ in ourselves, what we do and how we work.
Among a whole host of trade events, networking opportunities and conferences this past month, I had the pleasure of attending a tourism conference at West Point. This was organised by the South West Tourism Alliance, of which we are members and aimed at local business – attractions, accommodation providers etc. A charismatic, incredibly funny and rather theatrical chap named Geoff Ramm was one of our guest speakers and delivered his animated signature talk on ‘Celebrity Service’. Geoff is actually something of a celebrity himself and delivers these seminars all over the world to some very significant global companies. One thing in particular really captured my attention; his talk was, as the name suggests, focused around how to deliver extraordinarily good customer service – how to transform this service from acceptable to exceptional.
Geoff centred this concept around the theme of ‘personalisation’ – that is, making people – customers – feel truly valued. Now, there are of course many ways in which you can do this and I have no doubt that each listener went away and formulated their own interpretation of how this could be applied to their organisation but for me, this appears really rather simple.
Be friendly. Smile. Engage. Be interested. And most of all, have fun.
These attributes are contagious – infectious – and to my mind, an encounter with someone – be it from an attraction, accommodation provider or whatever else – which focuses on building a rapport based on friendliness, engagement, interest and fun is the key recipe for making someone feel truly valued.
As you are probably aware, we are a very small family-run business and I really hope that your previous and future encounters with Stuart Line have been at least one or maybe even all of the above. I hope that something about us or the experience we offer, has made and will continue to make you smile and provide fun.
I would like to invite you to offer some feedback for us, if you would like to. We welcome your thoughts and strive to always be the best we can possibly be. |
