This article looks at the nature of SOP-Customer Satisfaction, and explains some of the reasons why this guest experience concept is obsolete, even though it is used by all big hotel chains. Its Achilles Heel is that it does not embrace the fullness of human nature and that it is based on an obsolete world view, which even modern science has proved is very seriously incomplete. The article also outlines how the concept can, and most probably will, be replaced by an energetic, Heart-Based guest experience, which returns hospitality back to its spiritual roots in loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care.
Knowledge about how to use, change, and send energy, and how to condition the energy of rooms and buildings, has made the current, global, guest experience concept of SOP-Customer Satisfaction completely obsolete, just as the invention of the motor car made transportation by horses obsolete. Moreover, it enables the hotel industry to provide hospitality in line with the true, spiritual essence, which hospitality used to have before it was westernized and corporatized. Even the most conservative hoteliers must surely accept that SOP-Customer Satisfaction creates a faint reflection of the true spiritual essence of genuine hospitality, which is love.
Without realizing it, the hotel industry has based itself on an obsolete, mechanistic, and materialistic world view, which goes back to Newton and Descartes in the 17th century. It has resulted in a hotel guest experience being created by means of corporate manuals filled with emotionless and mechanical standards of performance (SOPs), where there is no mention of loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care, and no allowance made for man’s spiritual nature and propensity to love others.
The modern, corporate approach to hospitality has replaced the essential core values of hospitality, namely, loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care, with efficiency and the need to clone a corporate template to each new member of the hotel group. Now that the new focus in hospitality is on technology, and on replacing human contact with computers, digital devices, and smart phones, we can expect that “love for fellow human beings” will be made a persona non grata on the list of corporate core values. Some would argue that this happened quite a while ago.
However, I am optimistic that the chain hotel concept of cloning an emotionless corporate SOP-Customer Satisfaction template to every hotel in the group will die out in a generation. When the hotel industry discovers what mankind has known for thousands of years that the human body has an energy field, hoteliers will have discovered the means to making the greatest transformation in the guest experience since the modern hotel industry began.
Because it is easy to create hotel chains whose guest experience is founded on an infinitely variable concept of spiritual or Heart-Based Hospitality the hotel groups which prefer tradition over the infinite possibilities resulting from reconnecting hospitality to heart energy and to the essential loving nature of human beings, will certainly lose many customers.
I think that even hoteliers generally can see that there is something wrong with the kind of experience produced by a cloned, emotionless, corporate SOP-Customer Satisfaction template. The spirit of the Age is changing, and global, social and economic events are creating different and ever-stronger emotional and spiritual needs, which the old-style SOP-Customer Satisfaction template cannot meet.
The essential nature of SOP-Customer Satisfaction is the fundamental problem. It does not embrace both the material and spiritual sides of human nature. Moreover, the concept completely ignores the energetic and vibrational nature of human beings, and the effect of energy on people, buildings, and spaces. The seeds of its demise are inherent to it.
To create the guest experience the staff are trained to work in strict conformity with mechanical SOPs. While some flexibility may be allowed, on the whole, the SOPs rule because corporate people have decided that they represent the best ways to satisfy the material needs of guests efficiently. SOPs are not looked at to see, if they conform to the spiritual and emotional needs of human beings, such as to show and receive loving-kindness and compassion. As a result, the SOP manuals can only produce the warmth and happiness equivalent somewhat to a loveless marriage.
The nature of corporate thinking is another cause of the problem with SOP-Customer Satisfaction. Love is not a corporate, politically respectable, hospitality concept; nor is the idea of using human energy. Indeed, can you imagine anyone standing up in a corporate office meeting and saying, “We can increase our revenue manifold and compete better by increasing the amount of loving-kindness and compassion we show our guests, and by teaching our staff about energy.” There would be stunned silence in the Boardroom.
It is not surprising that the SOP-Customer Satisfaction guest experience is disconnected from hospitality’s true spiritual essence when you look at corporate mission and vision statements, which tend to focus on “satisfying” guests, and seem to have been edited and sanitised of all passion and love, as in these examples:
- “Our mission is to exceed the expectations of our customers and to achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction.”
- “We are one united team of dedicated hotel professionals committed to the achievement of guest satisfaction, high productivity, … and profitability.”
- “The vision of (hotel group) is to lead the hospitality industry in superior customer care.”
One corporate mission statement shows that the hotel group aims “to redefine efficiency”. The corporate people there seem to think that guests value ultra-efficiency over warmth, compassion, and loving-kindness.
In the future, competition between hotel groups will not be based on who practises the satisfying SOPs the best and who has the fanciest material luxury or technology. They will compete on the basis of who can create the strongest feelings of loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care; who can amaze the most with mystery and powers of intuition; and who can create the strongest, high frequency energy and vibrations throughout the property. In the future the hotel groups which do not master energy and focus on infusing the guest experience with the energy of love, and prefer to remain with familiar traditional ideas, will lose their investors and disappear. The world is changing rapidly.
Instead of making hotels in the group conform to emotionless SOPs, in future the corporate office will have to infuse every SOP with the spirit and energy of loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care in line with a new Group vision statement, which focuses on creating an energetic, dream-fulfilling guest experience, which is strong in these core values. This will be supported by a systematic approach to deepening the staff in the spirit, feeling, and meaning of the core values above; to touching and softening the hearts of the staff; and to using a wide variety of energy techniques. In addition, Human Resources systems will need to be changed and new ones created. The approach will enable the staff to create higher, unknown levels of guest experience.
Instead of imposing a corporate mission/vision on all the hotels in the Group, the corporate office will leave each hotel to create its own spiritually-oriented mission/vision. The corporate office’s mission/vision will only be a guideline and a minimum goal for the hotels in the Group, such as, “… the hospitality experience must fulfil the innermost dreams of the guests, and make the guests feel
like they are in heaven.”
Instead of creating a hotel group, which is restricted by an emotionless SOP-Customer Satisfaction template, every hotel in the group will be united by an approach, which is unique to the hotel group, and which is focused on changing the vibration of energy in each property. Increasing the energetic vibration of the staff and the hotel will become paramount because this affects the energy of the guest experience the most. This is how the money will be made in the future. In contrast, in SOP-Customer Satisfaction conformity to an emotionless corporate template is paramount, and hotel audits reinforce this principle.
As you increase the vibration of the staff or of a human being, the desire to show loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care increases automatically. The two are connected inextricably. Conversely, when you are constantly in a low vibration environment the desire decreases. This is why energetic, Heart-Based hospitality can create a guest experience far above the level of SOP-Customer Satisfaction, which is a pale and weak reflection of what is possible.
Most people vibrate on average at around 207 Hertz. This can be shown by muscle testing and kinesiology. This is a low level, equivalent to “getting by in life”, and is the result of many factors, but especially because throughout our lives we accumulate energy blockages, eat factory and processed food, and receive conditioning, which hold us back from higher vibrations. SOP-Customer Satisfaction contributes to this process because it is a low frequency, emotionless, and mechanical approach to hospitality.
The level we should aim for is 500 Hertz and above. 528 Hertz is called the “love frequency” and you find evidence of this frequency throughout Nature and the universe. When you vibrate at this level your life is characterized by love and happiness, and this energy affects you and others in many mutually beneficial ways. So many studies since the 1930’s have shown that your energy does not just affect you, but also those around you. This is old science, which the hotel industry’s leaders continue to ignore, but which would revolutionize the hotel industry.
SOP-Customer Satisfaction produces a low vibration. You do not need to use Kirlian or GDV photography to show this. You can see the effects on the faces of hotel staff and also feel its energy. Indeed, hoteliers will have seen the way it changes new staff. Often, when a new member of staff starts work, they are bubbling with the higher vibration of love and enthusiasm, but after a short period of time in the SOP-Customer Satisfaction hotel environment they change energetically and become like flat Champagne.
The first hotel group CEO to join the dots between “the guest experience”, “energy”, “ancient knowledge about energy”, “scientific proof about energy”, and “the bottom line”, will create a hotel group beyond comparison, and which will put the jobs of his fellow CEOs under immense pressure. Why? Because that CEO will probably have had a year’s start on his competitors, and every one of them will be playing catch-up.
Some corporate folks will argue that they have already moved on from SOP-Customer Satisfaction to the concept of Creating Truly Memorable Experiences (CTME). That is true, but if they are still using basically the same structures, systems, and manuals as before, then there will be no energetic change in the guest experience. CTME was meant from the start to be a spiritual concept, similar to Heart-Based Hospitality, but hotels have ignored the spiritual side, and so CTME is barely distinguishable from SOP-Customer Satisfaction, as a result.
In order to move on from SOP-Customer Satisfaction, the Training function will have to change radically. Training is for developing knowledge and skills, but not for developing spiritual capacity and energy, which are areas that hotels will need to learn about in order to move up the guest experience ladder so-to-speak.
In a typical hotel new members of staff go through a knowledge-filled, orientation programme, which includes the basic steps of SOP-Customer Satisfaction service. Then they are trained to perform the corporate SOPs. At the end of this process, they are fully qualified SOP-Customer Satisfaction staff, and that is what they then do. From the very beginning the new staff are conditioned to create a low vibration guest experience, and it is no wonder that staff get bored and the guest experience feels energetically flat.
In the future, though, the initial orientation and skills training process will be very different. During orientation there will be a process of opening the hearts of the new staff and removing energy blockages. This is the first part of the process of changing the energy of the staff and of increasing their vibration and natural desire to show loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care. This desire is weak when you are in a lower vibration.
When you live with an open heart, you are loving, kind, compassionate, and caring. You are not afraid to love deeply and to show loving-kindness and warmth. You feel connected to the loving and joyful energy of the heart and this energy flows easily. It feels easy to express and show love. Love leads the way in your life and guest service. You want to show loving-kindness and compassion, and this desire creates in you a feeling of softness, expansion, and lightness, and a gentle happiness in your chest. There is no process of opening the heart in SOP-Customer Satisfaction because conformity to mechanical SOPs is paramount.
The process of opening the heart makes you want to express and experience more love in each moment. You become true to yourself, authentic, who you really are, your real, loving self. You communicate with love. You think in kind ways, speak kind words, and you have a heart-driven intention behind all your interactions with others. You are not afraid to let the energy of the heart flow. You experience new levels of happiness and fulfillment, and there experience a feeling of effortlessness in your life. In short, the process of opening the heart softens people and makes them more gentle, loving, compassionate, and caring.
Aficionados of SOP-Customer Satisfaction will probably be thinking that this is nothing but New Age-sounding nonsense. It may sound like this, but I am referring to the future of the guest experience after old-style SOP-Customer Satisfaction has been replaced, as it surely will be.
New staff will also be taught about the body’s energy system; ways to remove their energy blockages; ways to change their own energy, ways to send energy; and ways to condition the energy of every outlet and space in the hotel.
Skills training will not be mechanical like nowadays. Instead, every SOP will be trained so that it is strong in the energy of loving-kindness, compassion, and heart-warming care. The manuals will have to be rewritten. The energetic warmth of the way in which the SOP is carried out will be paramount, not the mechanical correctness. The warmth and the feelings created will be measured against quotations, such as the following quotation, where every word and line describes feelings. For example, if we take the phrase, “… be as sweet musk to the sense of humankind”, a service interaction should create in the guest the same feelings as smelling a beautiful perfume.
“Be kind to all peoples; care for every person; do all ye can to purify the hearts and minds of men; strive ye to gladden every soul. To every meadow be a shower of grace, to every tree the water of life; be as sweet musk to the sense of humankind, and to the ailing be a fresh, restoring breeze. Be pleasing waters to all those who thirst, a careful guide to all who have lost their way; be father and mother to the orphan, be loving sons and daughters to the old, be an abundant treasure to the poor.” Baha’i Writings
Briefings will change too and include a short, heart-touching deepening in the core values, a love energy meditation, an energy-unblocking technique, or a heart energy activity – all aimed at increasing the vibration and spirit of the staff before their service period. Compare this to what happens typically.
While the traditional hotel chains constrict the human spirit, hotel groups in the future will allow it free rein. The days will soon come when the emotionless, corporate SOP-Customer Satisfaction guest experience will pass away, as happens to all obsolete concepts and systems. I have no doubt about this. The guest experience of the future will be much softer and gentler, and energetically strong. You create this guest experience in a very different way, and you have to understand energy to create it.
The time has come for change in the hotel industry. Victor Hugo once remarked: “You can resist an invading army; you cannot resist an idea whose time has come.” The upheaval will come from a new idea, which will send waves throughout the hotel industry. One does not need to be a guru, a famous hotelier, or a seasoned CEO with 40 years of experience in the largest hotel groups to see the upheaval, which is coming, as an obsolete guest experience concept is replaced. The question for corporate offices is, “Do you want to lead the upheaval or resist the winds of change with the inevitable consequences?”
