THE PROBLEM TO SOLVE:

HOTEL/RESORT/CASINO PROPERTY WITH GREAT DESTINATION VALUE WAS NOT ABLE TO ACHIEVE ITS PROPORTIONAL MARKET SHARE

ANALYSIS:

With all things adjusted for comparison with the competition – room rates, location, name recognition, food service, banquet and meetings space and other amenities, our client came to us to find solutions to reasons they weren’t achieving their fair market share.

After our thorough review of their business operations and our individual interviews and questionnaires with employees and management, we found the root of the problem. And it wasn’t that they weren’t getting opportunities for new customers. They were simply dropping the ball in the most critical area without even realizing it.

Our experience and our personal knowledge of their industry led us to determine without doubt that their employees were simply missing too many opportunities for customer contact as the most tried and true means of satisfying customers.

This creates an internal perception in the customer that is the kiss of death in the hospitality business. The customer did not feel special. The customer was simply not impressed enough to return, or to recommend it to friends. But worse, obviously they were telling their travel agents this as well. TAs influence choices of a vast number of people.

WHAT WAS REVEALED IN THE DETAILS:

The purpose of a business is to get and keep customers. Yet most employees didn’t fully understand this and internalize it well enough as the reason why they are all there.

Even though most all employees were hard working and dedicated, a lack of purpose in the business itself left them at loose ends. And so they had not developed the skills of basic salesmanship — customer relations and how to create sales opportunities that makes the customer feel like they are being given a service, not buying something.

Management sometimes assumes the employee knows more about general notions of human relations than they actually do know. Underestimation of this is nearly universal in customer-direct businesses. While not as difficult as it sounds, it must be taught.

THE FINAL ANALYSIS:

Our client was experiencing a common problem in the hospitality business – the inability to reach out to employees to bring them into the fold of the business and its purpose – its reason for being. Most often, this is not even realized or understood by management.

We don’t use words like Family to describe the employee-employer relationship, yet that is essentially the feeling of interdependence with each other that is most critical. And employees can learn it because it relies on basic human nature — the instinct to bond.

We also don’t use business terms and job descriptions. Those are boring, and we must excite the employees. First the employee must be confident and excited about themselves and their unique personalities and positions. Then they will move almost automatically into being excited about why everyone including management is here.

MANAGEMENT’S ROLE IN SOLUTIONS

Our experience shows us that management must also be involved in this much the same as employees. If management doesn’t buy in to the concepts taught, then a program will fail. So our investigation and training involves both sides of the equation.

The sometimes seasonal aspect of the hospitality business, and the nature of the turnover of employees in the areas of less-skilled work, requires a constant effort by the employer to make customer service training an on-going program. It simply amounts to creating a company culture of sorts.

The great over-riding advantage of this is that once begun, it has its own momentum. A business’s culture takes on a life of its own. This results in better employee retention, therefore less training of new employees.

But most important, it results in greatly improved customer retention.

ACTION

Each company is as individual as each person. So BRG created a customized training program specifically designed for the company.

The beginning of this program was to create attitudes and actions by employees to create a friendly atmosphere with the guests. This attitude is where all action begins. But our training process then took that to a new level.

For example, our program required employees to begin the new way of customer relations by doing simple things like making eye contact with guests, greet guests each time they saw them (remembering their names is the highest compliment one can pay a person).

Then we taught the employees how to take a moment to give the guest a departing remark as they left their presence. These are small, but extremely important gestures to a customer. And these start the process of teaching good customer relations, which lead to maximizing customer retention.

CONTINUING THE PROCESS

We kept adding small things like this to the employees’ interactions with guests. It’s truly amazing how much the small things are most noticed by guests or customers of any business.

Small kindnesses can build an atmosphere and an attitude in which the guest will almost always overlook the inevitable mistakes that will be made, because the employees as a group or team have created a level of trust and goodwill.

Goodwill and trust make new sales and up-selling much easier to accomplish.

In the later days of our exclusively designed training program, the beginnings of a common cause and culture was apparent because the employees were seeing very positive feedback and reactions from the guest for the first time. It was gratifying to the employees and kept them sharp.

The so-called “common cause” as a motivator cannot to be minimized or overlooked. Common causes rally political movements and nations. They can also rally employees if they are introduced and carried out correctly by integrating the company culture with on-going training.

RESULTS

BRG’s customer service program succeeded in capturing the employees’ imagination and their motivation grew.  We credit much of this success to the “friendly atmosphere” created and the positive emotions that grew from that among customers and employees both.

A simple training rule of treating the customer the same way each time they interacted with them made a completely different attitude surface in the employees’ minds.

Good customer service translates directly into customer retention. It’s human nature.

At our client’s request, we have since installed a system of permanent, continuous training to instill a culture of goodwill and graciousness that most guests are unaccustomed to experiencing anywhere else.

Part of this continuing program is “tracking” each department and employee area to document progress and to indicate to us whether modification in a process might be needed in a particular area.

Most importantly, it made a very favorable impression on the guests and the gains made in occupancy and length of stay, not to mention the new business this generated directly tracked by us and is attributed to our customized and specific program fully backed and implemented by management.

We now have a very satisfied client with guests returning in numbers never before experienced. And best of all, new guests coming in from word of mouth by travel agents and meeting planners.

The very best way to get a new customer is to keep an existing customer simply because they feel good about your product or service or both.