Tour Guides: Why you shouldn’t Underpromise and Overdeliver
We were supposed to have firewood delivered on Monday. It didn’t come.
I live in Canada, so this can be a lot more serious than you might otherwise think. But the threat of freezing to death is not what bothered me.
It was the fact that I didn’t get a call about it until late in the evening – after we had waited around for the day – to be told that they weren’t going to make the delivery.
We were informed that their truck had been vandalized (no fun), that it needed to be repaired (obvious) and that they weren’t able to deliver the wood today (even more obvious). They then explained they would need 24h to get the truck repaired and then deliver it on Wednesday. Hey, shit happens, I get it.
Guess who doesn’t get any wood on Wednesday? Two ignored phone calls from us later and they call back that evening and explain that the truck had re-broken down despite being fixed…. Can they deliver it Thursday? Definitely. It is now Thursday night. No firewood. Were I not in fake, rainy Canada, (i’ll give you a hint… it’s Vancouver) I may have had to burn a pile of my old apple devices, cell phones and printer cartridges to keep warm.
No doubt you have been let down in a similar way before. It is tragic how often we as human beings tell people we are going to do something, and then we don’t do it. And guess what, we as tour guides, tour leaders and tour managers do it all of the time to our guests!
So today, only slightly shivering, I want to talk about:
Underpromising and Over delivering.
After years in the industry, here’s where I think it leads many tour leaders astray:
Customer satisfaction expert Noriaki Kano, professor emeritus at the Tokyo University of Science, spends a lot of time trying to satisfy people – and then figuring how it happened (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) Through his research, he has identified three different types of quality when it comes to delivering on promises:
1) Basic quality
This is what all clients expect, but aren’t explicit about it because they assume they will get it. A great example would be a tour that starts and ends on time. This is not an area where you can ‘over-deliver’, as beginning and ending on time is the professional standard in the industry. You cannot be the tour company that starts ‘the most on time’ so to speak.
2) Performance quality
This refers to the features that are often asked for by customers and can really differentiate you from other companies. An example might be having an ‘active’ element in your tour – as in biking around the streets of Paris. Perhaps it’s the fact that your tour has a maximum group size and aims for a more intimate atmosphere.
3) Excitement quality
This refers to elements or features of your tour that surprise and delight customers. e.g. giving them free ice cream! Or perhaps a complimentary map at the end of your experience. This is getting into the territory of traditional ‘over delivering’. When we focus too much on the latter two forms of quality, the danger is we can fail to deliver the basics that our customer’s expect. When you are looking at how you improve your performance, nailing the basic expectations of your guest is where it counts.
Let’s use a metaphor. Imagine pulling up to a full serve gas station and when the attendee comes over with the bill – he doesn’t have a pen for you to sign the credit card slip…. and he left your gas tank door open… and he only washed half of your windshield… and he has enough body odour gag a mule.
You get the picture – this guy is not fulfilling the unspoken expectations of his job. Don’t just focus on what is explicit in your offer, but also the unspoken expectations that come with the territory of being a tour leader.
These include things like being professional, starting on time, speaking loudly, being able to manage groups, being positive and generally free of mule-choking B.O. These foundational slip-ups will take away your credibility, even if you think you’re going the extra mile in other ways.
Ok, got it. What’s the next step?
Figure out what your clients have already been promised.
Whether you know it or not, you are delivering on someone else’s promises! When a customers joins you on a tour they have been sold on a bill of goods. They come with expectations and are ready to have them fulfilled. There is a good chance that you were not involved in making those initial promises – but you are now responsible for that ‘delivery’. (Private guides being the exceptions to the rule here!)
The over or under promising has already happened! You just need to deal with it.
The right questions to ask:
1) What promises have already been made to my customers?
2) How do I fulfill those promises?
(and lastly, ONLY AFTER FIRST TWO ARE COMPLETED)
3) How do I overdeliver / exceed my clients expectations?
As tour leaders, we have a tendency to skip gleefully to the third step and try and look like an overachiever or a hundred and ten per cent’er. But this is really a mistake.
To keep with the gas station image: it’s like pulling in for a fill up and having your car vacuumed, washed, wiped, polished and buffed, but driving away only to find out that they only put a half a tank of gas in your car. Are you really going to be impressed with all the ‘extra service’? Hell No! You’re going to turn that car around and tell that crappy cheerleading team to put the rest of the gas in your car.
Same goes for the people on your tour.
So how can I figure out what people are expecting from me?
Fantastic question. A great place to start is the sales page for your tour.
Here’s a random example from the inter webs with a bit of home bias. Let’s take a look at the: ‘Haunted Vancouver Trolley Tour’ (web page: http://www.vancouvertrolley.com/tours/seasonal/haunted-halloween)
“As the night falls and shadows begin to appear, you will be whisked away by Trolley where you will see streets which seem normal, but if you look and listen close enough you will hear echoes of murders and other devastating events. Your host will tell the gruesome tales of The Castelanni Milkshake Murder, The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver’s Lady in Red and more.… When you arrive at the Vancouver Police Museum you will climb the stairs to the city of Vancouver’s first city morgue where over 15,000 autopsies have been performed, including Errol Flynn. You never know if you will stumble onto another autopsy already in progress…”
Gaawsh… Canadians are creepy. Point taken. Let’s move on.
Obvious promises from a tour sales page are: When will the tour happen? How long it will be? Where do you meet and finish? And lastly, what sights you will see?
But what are some of the less obvious promises?
Well for starters, somebody better tell me about this devastatingly mysterious milkshake massacre. I’m also expecting an eerie theme and judging from the picture on their website, I’m now expecting that guides are going to be in costume and wearing makeup.
Go through all of the correspondence that your guests receive and try to distill out some of the less obvious things that may be promised. For the above example, what have guests been told about bringing children? Were they promised a bathroom break or rest stop? What group sizes are they anticipating? Make a list. And make sure that you are delivering on each one of these promises.
If you say that you are going to be back by 9pm – you make sure that you are getting people back by 9pm – autopsy or otherwise. Whether you are guiding the tour, or managing the overall experience of a longer trip, you should be able to assemble a substantial list of both basic qualities and expectations, and then systematically check off each commitment.
Conclusion?
If Captain firewood shows up with the wood right now, gives me a hug, a bottle of wine and some free pizza – It will not change the fact that he blew the ‘wood delivery’ part of his ‘wood delivery job’. He lost credibility, and didn’t deliver – figuratively OR literally. An honest apology would go a long way, but it would still be a number successful deliveries before he earned back my trust.
Get the fundamentals of being a guide right, and then, once you’ve mastered those, you can get down to the business of over delivery.
-Kelsey T
P.S. Was I clear that I would keep the bottle of wine? Always keep free wine.
What fundamentals are you perhaps overlooking? Let me know in the comments below!
