This article not designed SuMMeR 2015 California Hotel & Lodging Association 9 A DeCADe AGO, as a summer intern, i sat in on a conversation at our corporate offices debating the merit of automated kiosks at the front desk. The prevailing argument was a financial one; more automation would lead to reduced staffing and increased profit margins. The debate raged between owners and executives in the room. The conclusion was to follow the successful do-it-yourself trends of the airlines and growing movement in the grocery stores. The goal was to implement a computer station that would allow a guest to bypass the desk and check-in independently. sound familiar? The technology was good and profit model sound. The kiosk debuted with excitement but quietly retired a few weeks later. guests and associates alike panned the terminal. Guest satisfaction scores dipped due to a decrease in staff, associate engagement slipped due to a decrease in shifts, and as quickly as it was introduced the kiosk became a relic of the past. The experiment concluded that the financial models failed to predict the intrinsic value of what the guest comes to the hotel seeking: great service. On the hotel side it eliminated Marriott’s mantra, “If you take care of your associates, they will take care of the customer, and the customer will keep coming back” is one of the most quoted and replicated mottos in the service industry. Consider: • New Hire Training—Who is doing the training and for how long? The trainer should be the best associate on the team. The one next up for promotion. Each new hire, each time must go through this person and be given the stamp of approval by them. zappos sets the standard by training new hires for a minimum of four weeks before they are permitted near a customer to sell something as simple as shoes. We too often allow our new associates to practice on our guests before they are done practicing on each other. • Ongoing education—Set a goal for each associate to receive at least 40 hours of additional leadership and system training throughout the year. These hours will Navigatititing Navigatiting Navigatitititititing Navigating for Success By Chris Harrison the value proposition of an historic brand: great service. Great service, as we re-learn every day, is authentic, personal, anticipatory, thoughtful, customizable, and ultimately supremely human. To the guest and associate, the kiosk presented a path away from these core service elements. We are now faced with an increasingly mobile world. New apps and options present guests with abilities to choose the speed and the frequency of their service. Progressively, each guest will have a varying amount of personal interactions with associates during their stay. Two touch-points, the “Hello” and “Goodbye” of the front desk will nearly always remain unchanged, however. These last guaranteed service collisions have become critical, and getting them right means attracting, training, and maintaining the right team. in a world of job-hopping millennials and retiring baby boomers it is imperative to have a strategy to win at the front desk. Building the right team begins with cementing the right local culture. Are you investing in your associates? it is not a coincidence that
CHLA Lodging News Summer 2015
To see the actual publication please follow the link above