Book Review: Unreasonable Hospitality

As law librarians, regardless of where we work, we are in a service profession. And because of that, I highly recommend the book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect, by Will Guidara. Will’s background is restaurants but his message is clear – whatever industry you work in, it’s possible to provide excellent service but while doing so, you can’t forget about the people who work for you.

While I encourage you to read the entire book, there are a few pieces of advice I want to highlight:

• Make and extend a charitable assumption to both your employees and customers. Everyone has bad days.
• Hire slow. A single employee can bring negative morale to what would otherwise be a fantastic team, so if the person you’re interviewing isn’t right for the job, keep looking. In addition, remember that many skills can be taught, but the right attitude and philosophy towards service is intrinsic. Keep looking, and if necessary, hire slow. As Will writes: “the best way to respect and reward the A players on your team is to surround them with other A players. This is how you attract more A players.”
• Trust the people you hire, so when you give the team responsibility, the team steps up and becomes more responsible. This means empowering even the most junior members of the staff.
• How you listen matters, both with customers and employees. If you dismiss a suggestion or complaint outright, that person is unlikely to approach you again but if you listen and react well – and this doesn’t mean you’ll change something! – that person will be more apt to approach you in the future with their ideas.
• Automation is great, until it’s not. In Will’s example, he talks about how the lighting and music at Eleven Madison Park had to be perfect to match the mood of the dining room, so it couldn’t be automated. The customer experience was more important than programming the lights to dim at a certain time every night, or choosing a playlist for every Monday. A real-life person intervened based on the atmosphere, mood, and customer need.
• Telling a customer they’re wrong so they know you haven’t made a mistake is actually the bigger mistake. As Will says, “the credit we got from our guests for making them happy far outweighed any we lost from making a so-called mistake…Saying sorry…doesn’t mean you’re wrong.”