Service excellence vital to future of Scottish tourism
Scottish Enterprise's annual Customer Service Conference at the Old Fruit Market in Glasgow on Tuesday, 11 March, will highlight the increased importance of service standards throughout Scottish tourism businesses.
In this, the seventh year of the conference, Scottish Enterprise will bring some of the world's leading tourism service industry players to Scotland to talk about the importance of maintaining consistently high standards.
This year's conference presents an impressive list of international experts on the subject of customer service including David Fairhurst, senior vice president of McDonald's Restaurants; Ann-Marie Stagg, head of insurance services at Smile, the Internet Bank; Oliver King of Engine; Richard Ball of Calcot Manor; Diana Simpson from New York's Museum of Modern Art, Esther O'Halloran, human resources director, Paul UK and Jane Sunley of talent retention specialists, learnpurple.
Widely recognised as an area in which the industry can implement changes to boost the overall economic performance of the sector, tourism operators investing in the quality of customer service often report significant profitability improvements of up to 10 per cent as well as a reduction in the number of customer complaints and a reduction in staff turnover levels.
Speakers lined up for the event will each share with delegates some of the secrets of their successes, their strategies to raise the bar year on year and some practical examples of how they make service work for them, particularly in the crucial area of staff motivation, recruitment and retention as well as establishing mechanisms for Customer feedback
The Customer Service conference is part of a Scottish Enterprise programme of events for businesses operating in Scotland's tourism industry. The programme has attracted thousands of attendees year on year and is part of the enterprise agency's contribution to the tourism industry's strategy the "Tourism Framework for Change."
The importance of the conference was highlighted by Eddie Brogan, tourism director, Scottish Enterprise, who was talking ahead of the event.
He said: "Our aim for this conference is again this year to provide Scottish tourism businesses with access to international, UK and Scottish best practice in the critical area of customer service. Once more we have agroup of inspirational speakers who can make us look afresh at how we manage service quality in our organisations and across the industry as a whole."
For more information on the conference visit the tourism events website