Great customer service starts with a smile

This summer is set to be the UK’s biggest ‘staycation’ ever (Yes! That’s a real word – just look it up on Wikipedia) as the British public resolve to spend their summer holidays on home soil. So the National Skills Academy for Hospitality is launching a campaign to celebrate the very best of British hospitality.

The Smiles of Britain campaign encourages members of the public to be on the lookout for the nation’s warmest and most welcoming smiles on the faces of people working in the Hospitality industry. And, when they see one, to snap a picture and share it on the Academy’s campaign website (www.smilesofbritain.co.uk)

But as well as helping to highlight Britain at its hospitable best, there is also a serious commercial message underpinning the campaign. As David McHattie, chief executive of the National Skills Academy for Hospitality, explains:

“The role of the Academy is to seek out the very best training, development and education programmes in hospitality, to recognise and celebrate that excellence, and to lay down the gauntlet for the whole industry to follow their lead.

“As part of this process we want to shine a light on those in our sector who are leading the way in customer service.”

Idealogy worked hard and fast with the NSA Hospitality team to achieve almost unprecedented deadlines, in order to get the campaign – a combination of ‘YouTube’-esque web site, social networking, personalisation tools and powerful merchandising – launched and active by late May 2009.

Idealogy developed the Smiles of Britain website as a navigational addition to the current National Skills Academy website, as well as encouraging all Smilers to visit though the more conventional URL. And the response has been extraordinary, with an almost ‘word of mouth’ fervour attracting thousands of unique visitors, and of course Smilers, during the month after launch, supported by a moderate social network prompting program via Twitter. However, this was more judgement than luck because the web environment was designed to provide a ‘social networking’ ambience for new talent within the Hospitality industries – a place to share views, images and other content with like-minded colleagues.

In addition, Idealogy developed a “Draw a Smile’ personalisation tool, to encourage members of the network to create more individual images, rather than de rigeur Facebook style snaps, and to reproduce them for their working environments, common areas and homes.

Additional campaign elements included lapel badges, branded balloons, T-shirts and campaign cards.

Visit either www.excellencefound.co.uk/Smiles-Of-Britain or www.smilesofbritain.co.uk to see what’s putting a smile on the face of customer service across the UK.

Posted by Simon Johnson