Three Strategies for Getting Started With 'Unreasonable Hospitality'
October 17th, 2025 | 5 min. read

Customer service is what makes the world go ‘round. Funny as it may sound, it’s generally pretty true. We live in a world that is largely built on a service economy—even for businesses where it may not seem entirely obvious that you’re providing a service, it’s likely that you’re still having to execute some sort of customer service. As prevalent and important as customer service is, it still feels like something that’s hard to pin down. For business owners and managers, helping to foster a culture of good customer service isn’t always easy, and the journey toward making great customer service the standard within your organization is a long and arduous one.
At Payday HCM, we’re very familiar with the ongoing process of offering great customer service. We have clients ask us questions all the time about methods to help encourage their employees to offer great customer service, or different strategies for creating a culture of great customer service. For us, while there are many different points of inspiration for how we approach service, Will Guidara’s 2022 book “Unreasonable Hospitality” provides excellent insight into how to shift your approach from offering good customer service to offering exceptional hospitality. But where do you even begin?
Well, in this article, we’ll be looking at three strategies for getting started with “Unreasonable Hospitality.” This article is part of a larger series of videos and articles focused on the art of offering hospitable service, analyzing the lessons from “Unreasonable Hospitality” and finding ways to implement them. Here, we’ll be taking a look at the second chapter of the book, titled “Making Magic In A World That Could Use More Of It,” to see what kinds of simple strategies you can implement right now that can help level up your customer service. These strategies include:
1. Start With a Feeling
One of the easiest ways to start implementing the lessons from “Unreasonable Hospitality” in your workplace is by determining how you want your customers to feel.
The Feeling of Good Customer Service
The first section of the second chapter of “Unreasonable Hospitality,” titled “People Will Never Forget How You Made Them Feel,” discusses Guidara’s personal connections to the hospitality industry through his parents—both of whom worked in the hospitality industry. It provides insight into how our personal lives can also influence our approach to service.
In this section, Guidara discusses how his parents met and his mother’s journey with brain cancer—from diagnosis to eventual life as a quadriplegic. He reminisces on how, despite the circumstances, his mother always found ways to take care of him, and his father found ways to help both Guidara and his mother retain a sense of normalcy amidst the extenuating circumstances.
Strategies for Making People Feel Seen and Valued
Guidara’s childhood provides an important lesson in making people feel seen. Guidara’s parents were well aware of how their situation could potentially impact Guidara, so they took every step possible to ensure not only that he felt they were still seeing him and taking care of him, but that his mother was also being seen and valued as well.
By treating every interaction as a chance to make someone feel valued, organizations can turn service into a signature—one that defines their culture and brand far more than any product or policy ever could. Sometimes, good service comes down to just a small gesture, one that takes someone who’s feeling overwhelmed and helps them feel at ease.
2. Don’t Underestimate A Good Welcome
The next section discusses the power that a good welcome can have and how it can be transformative in your business’s approach to customer service.
Analyzing the Meaning of a True Welcome
The next section continues Guidara’s personal journey, picking up when he’s in his final year of college. The section largely focuses on Guidara’s time in a class called “Guest Chefs,” centered around a guest chef; for Guidara’s class, it was Daniel Boulud, coming to do a dinner that is staffed entirely by the students in the class. As the dinner’s marketing director, Guidara was tasked with hosting the chef and his associates.
Guidara describes the great lengths he went to ensure his guests had a proper welcome to upstate New York. He borrows an Audi A5 from a classmate, takes them to the town’s best restaurant, and eventually has everyone back at his place following the dinner for a proper college after-party. Suffice it to say that Guidara had provided a warm welcome.
Being Welcoming Within Your Organization
Guidara’s experience in this section shows how impactful a good first impression can be. For your business, ensuring you set the right tone from the start can be crucial in establishing a lifelong partnership between you and your client. Going the extra mile to make sure each customer feels welcome can pay dividends later on.
Practically, there are many methods to go about this. Whether in-person or digitally, make the first interaction feel like an invitation, not a transaction. Use names, context, and small details to show attentiveness. Instead of teaching rigid scripts, teach employees how to notice, interpret, and respond naturally. It’s also key to ensure any physical spaces communicate warmth and respect.
3. Hospitality as Virtue
Finally, the last section of this chapter, titled “The Nobility in Service,” demonstrates how impactful providing unreasonable hospitality can be for someone.
‘An Island of Delight and Care in the Sea of Our Grief’
In the final sub-section, Guidara tells the reader about the death of his mother and the devastation and mourning that would come in the months to follow. Guidara was set to postpone a trip to Spain that was set for a week after his mother died, but his father encouraged him to go. His last-minute travel plans meant his dad would have to drive him from Boston to New York City to catch a flight.
On a whim, Guidara reached out to Chef Boulud with the smallest chance of dining at his restaurant. Boulud responded with a warm yes and proceeded to provide Guidara and his father with, in Guidara’s words, “four of the best hours of my life.” Chef Boulud’s exceptional service provided Guidara and his father a ray of hope during an extraordinarily dark time.
Strategies for Embracing the Nobility of Service
This section hits on some of the more important points of Guidara’s book: good service—unreasonable hospitality—is about more than just good service. The best customer service can brighten someone’s day, even if only for a moment. Guidara describes this as both a privilege and a responsibility.
Ultimately, when you interact with a customer or client, you may not know what else is going on in their life or what happened to them that day. Leading with feeling and providing a warm welcome can help to uncover the virtue in providing outstanding service. Taking small steps to ensure your customers feel seen and welcomed is rewarding in it of itself for both parties involved.
Make a Difference With Unreasonable Hospitality
Customer service is at the core of nearly every business, and yet, understanding what makes good customer service or delivering good customer service is still an ever-evolving field. Of course, changes in technology and how we interact with one another will impact the ways that one can deliver good service, but even still, what kinds of strategies are proven to work? Knowing what turns good customer service into great customer service can feel mysterious at times, causing managers and business owners to stress and worry about whether or not the service they are delivering is truly exceptional. With the information provided in this article, coupled with the insights provided in “Unreasonable Hospitality,” you’ll have the tools to get your business started on the journey toward exceptional service.
Be sure to check out the next installments of our “Unreasonable Hospitality” series on our YouTube channel. Also, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on any future payroll, HR, and benefits-related content. Make sure to check out our payroll, HR, and benefits administration services as well to learn more about how Payday’s commitment to unreasonable hospitality can help transform the way your business does business.
Keith Edwards is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a former U.S. Army Captain. He has over 34 years of leadership experience in government, financial services, manufacturing, retail, and non-profit organizations. He assists businesses in improving the bottom line through increased efficiency in payroll processing, time and attendance, employee benefits, and human resources. His goal is to allow your business to focus on revenue-producing activities instead of non-revenue-producing activities to allow business leaders to sleep better at night knowing they are protected from threats related to compliance and tax/financial issues in the areas of payroll and HR.
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