Mr. Boles

Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt

Incorporating Hospitality Standards into Daily Routines

By Jesse Boles, Executive Director of Operations, FreemanGroup

Imagine your business five minutes prior to your arrival tomorrow morning. Picture what everything looks like and what everyone on the premises is doing. Next, imagine what things would look like if you were to simply not show up. To take things a step further, imagine what things would look like if none of the managers showed up. The only people in their proper places are the hourly supervisors and line employees. Now, imagine you and your managers have been abducted by aliens, or that some equally wild event has occurred that will prevent you and your managers from returning to your business for quite some time. Assume that employee schedules will remain intact, and that there are enough supplies on hand to last for a good while.

What do you imagine would happen on the first day of your absence? What do you think your operation would look like after one week? How different would it look one month down the road?

On some level, it would be comforting to think that the place would be on fire or flooded within a few hours of your absence, but in all likelihood, for a fair amount of time things would be just fine.

Minus the alien abductions and other dramatics, I have seen the scenario described above play out many times in practice. I am frequently out of the office, working with clients and attending sales functions, etc., and yet, despite my absence, my office has not experienced any catastrophic events. How can this be?

Employees generally possess a healthy self-interest in the business in which they are engaged and a degree of competency that tends to be overlooked during normal, everyday operations. The reality is that your employees will continue to carry out the tasks of their jobs reasonably well even when you are not around. You don’t need to stand behind your front desk agents in order for them to remember the procedures for checking in a guest. Why, then, are you needed?

You are needed because what tends to suffer in your absence are the standards to which employees’ tasks are performed. In your absence, a front desk agent may continue a procedure, but be a bit slower about their work, a bit less thorough, or neglect to respond to guests in the manner that your standards dictate. What makes you valuable is your ability to focus on the standards that all employees should be meeting every day on the job. Success requires holding people accountable to the standards you have set while developing their skills so that they are able to become masters of their crafts. Hold your employees accountable to your standards, and your guests and employees will reap the benefits.

Accountability

If you are going to reinforce the standards of performance that you have set for your staff, you have to engage with your staff where they work. This truism certainly applies to the worlds of competitive sports and academia, where interactions between leaders and participants are as constant and direct as possible. I would wager that if there were no rule prohibiting a football coach from being in the huddle, he would be in the middle of the huddle before every snap, just as if there were no rule stopping a professor from pointing a student towards a correct answer, he or she would continue to teach rather than keep silent during the test.

Unlike sports and academia, the hospitality industry has no rule which states that leaders cannot coach participants during live job performance. Yet time and time again, I see managers spend the bulk of their time in the office while the most important moments in their business are occurring outside their doors. If you want your team to win the game or pass the test, you need to get out of the back office and into the lobby or onto the front drive and work directly with your staff as much as possible.

Being there is half the battle, but responding appropriate to what you see is critical. Staff members meeting your standards will only keep meeting them if you provide reinforcement. Staff members not meeting your standards will continue to under-perform until they receive the corrective coaching they need in order to meet your expectations.

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is not just something leaders use just to make people feel good; it is a tool they use to get people to repeat behaviors. To make your reinforcement effective, state precisely what a person did and how the standard was met. For example, rather than simply telling someone “Good job,” say, “Great job on using the guest’s name as you checked them in.” The latter statement lets the employee know what they need to do in the future to gain recognition. To further motivate the employee, you can also explain why what they do is critical in terms of their success, the success of their coworkers, or the success of the company as a whole. You might tell the employee, “Using the guest’s name really helps create a connection with the guest and makes them more likely to return and do business with us again.” Close the interaction by offering them your sincere thanks, and you will have completed an effective interaction that will help ensure your standards will continue to be met.

Corrective Coaching

In most cases, an employee who is missing one or two standards is meeting many others. You may observe a valet immediately approaching the car and opening the door, but not smiling as they do it, or a front desk agent using the guest’s name during check in, but neglecting to relay to the guest an important piece of information. Before you correct the behavior that isn’t meeting the standard, don’t overlook the positive aspects of the employee’s performance. Address the standards that were met as well as those that were missed. Consider things from the employee’s point of view. If you are doing 90 percent of your job correctly, but only get feedback on the 10 percent that was incorrect, you will probably not be very motivated to continue doing the 90 percent right. You may even feel that you are being nitpicked or unfairly criticized—and your feelings would be justifiable! The first step to correcting performance is acknowledging the things that the employee is doing correctly. The second is coaching the employee to meet the standards that are being missed.

When you coach an employee, be sure to do more than simply point out what the employee is doing wrong. Although the behavior required to meet a standard may seem obvious to you, you can’t assume that employees understand how all of your standards are to be applied in practice. If you tell an employee that they need to use the guest’s name in the future, but don’t tell them how to obtain the name, or how to handle names that are difficult to pronounce, or that the standard is to use the title and last name, you are just setting the employee up to fail again. You are also be setting yourself up to do more correction than reinforcement in the future, which not only makes your job less fun, but makes you a person who is less than pleasant to see. Coaching includes asking questions, demonstrating, having the employee practice the behavior, and using techniques that will ensure that the correct behavior is understood and becomes practiced by the employee.

Mastering the Craft

Simply following a set of standards for delivering customer service does not make an employee a true hospitality professional; it merely makes them competent. The best service experiences are delivered by providers who are able to obtain an understanding of the guest and the guest’s unique situation, and then improvise to deliver an experience catered to that guest. Competency is understanding all of the rules and standards for each situation; mastery is understanding when they do and don’t apply, and how to deviate from standards properly. This kind of mastery takes time, coaching, and confidence.

At one time or another, we have all said that the only appropriate way to touch a guest is with a handshake. It is a rule that we follow…most of the time. A service provider that has mastered their craft knows when it is appropriate to put a hand on a guest’s shoulder. As hospitality leaders, it is our responsibility to help our employees learn to identify and respond to unique situations, using first principals of hospitality. Rule books and role plays will only take an employee—and organization—so far. To develop employees into true masters of their crafts, you have to stand shoulder to shoulder with them and deepen the conversation around your standards.

Jesse Boles joined FreemanGroup in 2007, and assumed the role of Executive Director of Operations in November 2008. He is currently responsible for FreemanGroup’s training and measurement divisions, heading projects in conjunction with some of the hospitality industry’s leading service providers. Mr. Boles has worked with leadership teams to develop brand service cultures at both existing and new properties for Las Vegas casinos and luxury hotels. He has been integral in the set up and execution of brand-specific measurement programs for Wyndham Hotel Group, Hard Rock International, Delaware North Companies, and MGM Resorts International. Mr. Boles can be contacted at 972-479-1345 or jboles@freemangroup.org Extended Bio...

HotelExecutive.com retains the copyright to the articles published in the Hotel Business Review. Articles cannot be republished without prior written consent by HotelExecutive.com.