With an average of 34 pubs closing each month (source: Weller, 2025), could the level of customer experience training, or lack thereof, be a large contributing factor to the drop in footfall in sites resulting in these closures?
Operational costs rose by almost 300% post-Covid along with an average debt of £40k (source: The Mayor of London: The London Assembly, 2022) resulting in the operators passing these increases onto their customers and businesses cutting their budgets.
Research has shown that, in many cases, the cuts were made to what is perceived as non-essential training, which is where customer experience training regularly fits. And there looks to be no let-up for 2025 with the average business rates bill having risen by 140% (source: The Morning Advertiser, 2024) and rising employer national insurance contributions, resulting in an even tighter squeeze on the training budgets.
Customer service versus the customer experience
In the 1990s, customer expectations started to change with these changes being recognised by the industry in the early 2000s and the term ‘the customer experience’ starting to be used on a more regular basis.
It was predicted the customer experience would be the “next business tsunami” (source: Pennington, 2016). While traditionally, the level of customer service expected would be a greeting and a please and thank you at the service area, customer experience now incorporates everything starting from the customer’s first venue touchpoint, how they are made to feel during their visit, leading to the lasting impression that experience leaves on their guest. The customer experience is how the company, as a whole, contributes to that end experience.
The Covid impact
Some 75% of customers say long-term changes in their behaviour have been driven by the pandemic (source: Lai, 2021). Customer expectations are much higher than pre-Covid with guests no longer tolerating a mediocre experience and demanding a level of service much higher than that required pre-Covid.
They are also more acutely aware of the experience they are receiving as a whole and, crucially, are gravitating to venues that make this experience a priority (source: Kim & Seo, 2023). Customer awareness of service standards has heightened with 58% of consumers stating their customer service expectations are higher than they were a year ago while 93% of customer service teams believe customers have higher expectations than ever before (source: Morgan, 2022).
Current training in the industry
Industry professionals believe the biggest single change in training in the sector has been the move to online training. This move is positive, in that training can be delivered to a higher volume of people in a much more time-efficient manner with no need to send them from one side of the country to another resulting in lower costs and less impact on people’s personal lives.
In-person training must therefore be worthwhile and would normally last a full day, however, post-Covid, much of this training has been broken down into smaller components to be run in shorter, more frequent periods.
One industry training manager explained financial constraints have resulted in training cuts with one company having had their 12 annual, in-person, courses reduced to 10 courses per year of which only four are in-person. This is a reduction of 16.5% in training and a 33.3% drop in in-person training which they believe has resulted in a steep decline in team member guest competence.
Some frontline operators further believe the lack of potential team members leads to managers panic recruiting, where stress and time constraints leave no time for “extended calculation or analysis” (source: Schon, 2016). They try to fill positions too quickly without providing the necessary training.
One experienced general manager explained that, on taking on a new site, he was given just three days’ instruction (which he described as inadequate). Once left to run the busy site, the GM felt it was very much a sink or swim scenario, in stark contrast to his experience of training pre-Covid, which followed a detailed and structured plan.
In the current professional climate, there has been a strong shift in training towards being more focused on the individual and supporting them with their mental and physical wellbeing, educating them around disability awareness, equality, diversity and inclusion. This shift is moving the focus away from the customer experience and technical skills training.
The new normal
Research shows that among others, the following experiences are reasons that many people are not returning to sites. They speak of being ignored on entry and at the bar; of team members being allowed to use personal devices behind the bar; team members not serving in order of arrival at the bar due to poor guest awareness and a lack of personal interaction and eye contact.
This list continues with teams not having the product knowledge required to adequately inform guests, nor the skills and empowerment to resolve issues and in a lot of cases a lack of desire to fix said issues. Guests regularly arrive to find dirty bars and tables alongside uncleaned toilets lacking in soap or toilet roll. Is it any wonder people are voting so heavily with their feet?
Current customers are less accepting of a poor experience and are more vocal than in pre-Covid times, sharing their bad experience with friends, colleagues and on social media. There will always be difficult and sometimes rude customers, however finding pubs and teams below standard will only fuel guest dissatisfaction. Guests want to enjoy a quality meal or drinks, in an environment that is clean, safe and welcoming. They expect to be looked after by a team member who is confident, competent and personable.
Considering the realities of the new normal, which has come from the pandemic’s fundamental changes to the customer experience (source: Deloitte, 2020), companies must begin to look at reimagining their customer experience.
While there are some great team members being recruited who have a passion for the hospitality industry, team shortages and wage budget cuts have led to a lack of on-the-job mentorship. The cutbacks on training in the customer experience are then resulting in a new team member being thrown in at the deep end of the industry, left facing customers with whom they do not have the skills to deal with and who want an experience that the team member is not equipped to deliver.
This results in customer dissatisfaction, which is regularly visited on the team member who may in turn leave the job. The industry has lost a potentially valuable team member, the company has lost any return on training investment and the customer has left, unhappy and unlikely to return.
Currently, the majority of team members are Generation Z, a generation that is comfortable with technology and have lived a lot of their social lives through social media. This reliance on social media coupled with having lived a large portion of their emerging adulthood in lockdown has resulted in team members being less confident when dealing with the public face-to-face.
Although Generation Z has been bringing remarkable technical talents to the field, many companies have noticed a significant lack of soft skills like communication, flexibility, emotional intelligence and conflict resolution (source: Gurchiek, 2023). This lack of soft skills has led to a reluctance to personally interact with guests and when they do interact, that experience is regularly not up to expected standard.
This skills gap needs to be urgently addressed. Training a person how to personally interact with a guest, through on-line training is simply ineffective. Seymour underpins the importance of training by stating that low morale and the poor happiness levels of team members can be attributed to the lack of investment in team training (source: Seymour, 2022).
What needs to change?
We are in the business of hospitality, which, by very definition, is the ‘friendly and generous reception of guests or strangers’ (source: The Oxford English Dictionary, 2002) and further defined as ‘entertaining strangers and guests kindly’ (source: Chambers English Dictionary, 2021) so why are so many pubs continuing to miss the mark on this?
Investment in customer experience training is crucial to the future of this industry. It ensures that the team members have the tools to deliver an excellent experience, using empathy and emotional intelligence, and is key to making sure that guests desires and expectations are met.
By investing in customer experience training, the team members may be given confidence, allowing them to thrive and develop using the tools given through training. Guests will then enjoy the quality experience that they are now looking forward to, resulting in higher footfall, a healthier bottom line and a happier environment for everyone involved.
Meyer writes that: “… food is secondary to something that matters even more. In the end, what’s most meaningful is creating positive, uplifting outcomes for human experiences and human relationships. Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel” (source: Meyer, 2010).
We are a people business and unless the industry puts the customer experience at the front and centre of all decisions, guests will continue to vote with their feet and the ‘Closed for Business’ signs will continue to increase exponentially.
- Jennifer Farrell is a certified trainer at CX Training For Pubs, having owned and run a site, and worked at companies including Convivial London Pubs, The Capital Pub Company, M&B and Scottish & Newcastle
