A SUNNY WELCOME IN THE SUNNIEST CITY OF THE WORLD

WHEN YOU TRAVEL to a new place, think about what your first interaction in that community is, who is it with? Is it with the owner of the hotel you are staying at, is it with the general manager of the restaurant you eat in?

Most likely your first interaction when you arrive in a new community is your Uber driver from the airport, or maybe a gas station attendant, or the fast-food employee serving you fries through a drive-through window.

A lot hinges on that interaction.

The same is true here in Yuma – our visitors and winter visitors typically experience their first interaction with a front-line employee and their outlook on our community and their expectations for Yuma are set with that interaction.

This is beyond just customer service, this is ensuring our visitors and our customers view our community the way we view it, positive and welcoming.

And our front-line employees will treat visitors in the way we teach them to, whether we have a positive and embracing work culture or if we treat interactions as cumbersome and difficult.

I hope we all in Yuma are able to embrace the exciting and amazing things about our community. We aren’t talking about the basics of welcoming guests and visitors to our community, but there’s more to it!

I don’t need to get into the basics of customer service for you, if you are reading this it’s likely that you know what to do.

What I want to make sure you know is that in those interactions, the guest and our visitors are getting a lot more than just what your specialty is – they are learning what they should fall in love within Yuma!

Personally, I love to ask the question, “What is your favorite thing in Yuma?” I hear a lot of great answers ranging from the food to the river or dunes and desert to family and the sunshine. Really, any answer that is positive and truly something you love about Yuma is a great response.

But I hear far too often a response of “Oh, nothing really.” That is the response we need to

work on!

When a visitor asks an Uber driver where they should get dinner tonight, we should have a great answer ready to go – what’s your favorite meal in town? When we are working the till at a shop and they ask us what they should do this afternoon, we should be able to excitedly tell them to visit the Prison or another fun activity in town!

We don’t all have to be experts, it’s hard enough to master our day-to-day activities, but we should be able to drag up a few answers that encourage our visitors to fall in love with our town.

So, as we are preparing for our peak visitor season to begin and as we start to see them getting to town, let’s remember, each first conversation with someone might determine if they love Yuma or if they don’t. We each have that power in our community.

Make sure they feel the sunshine from above and from us and give them a sunny welcome in the sunniest city in the world!