Mr. Albarran

Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt

The Service Educator: A new role for the 21st Century Hotelier

By Marco Albarran, Founder & President, Remarkable Hospitality, Inc.

Have you ever thought of having an outside hospitality professional conduct seminars, train or talk to your staff about innovative ideas to improve service levels? If so, are they involving a lot of the standards and culture dynamics from your brand? If not, have you thought of having someone assist you in developing and using as a tool to train your employees? Do you use outside trainers?

The reasons why we look into these questions is due to that hospitality service has been highly neglected in many establishments, given the current climate in the hospitality industry (and the economy). Traditional service training certainly may not work as expected. Hospitality entities are focusing on marketing to capture new customers but not as much in retaining these external customers, nor the team members (internal customers) that have a major influence on external customer retention. Additionally, even though time is not available for managers to perform ongoing trainings even if they do, it seems that employees may react better to an outside hospitality professional that can perhaps serve as a person of confidence. The analogy that best describes this is that of parenting. Why is it that children, especially after a few years, listen more to external influences (friends, Internet, TV) rather than parents? As this may be somewhat alarming, it may work for the positive to bring in someone from the outside to speak and engage your employees.

That said why not use hospitality and hospitality/service educators to execute this? While considering this, why not also incorporate hospitality and service theoretical concepts in your initial and ongoing training, thereby converting it into a class session? Do we think that perhaps this may motivate and retain employees, and also create a sense of career into the majority of employees? Perhaps we can seek to do this as the following ways:

1. Bring Managers Together with a Seasoned Expert

Why not bring managers together with a hospitality service trainer/educator and consultant to first have them seek a way to motivate their employees by communicating better hospitality terms that they can use with their line level employees? Would this help them realize that they are involved in the culture and lingo of the industry and perhaps feel more valued, rather than just being told what to do and moving forward? Should the managers and supervisors always approach situations as an opportunity to teach and also learn by listening to their line level employees about ideas and concepts that may potentially work in a specific establishment, in addition to any standards that have been in action already? Why is this a good “outside the box” way of thinking?

2. Measure Service Levels

Another concept that can be done is to use their guest satisfaction scores as a way to measure where we are in terms of service levels. Does your property have one of these programs in place, or perhaps corporate is directly involved with this? Why not then use the information that comes in monthly to analyze where we are in terms of guest service scores, set a goal, when comparing the mean of sister properties or brand properties in the region/national, and alongside a consultant, distribute the information captured from each department (meaning you gather possible categories that are measured and are given to each individual department, to analyze, see where the issues are and the opportunities to increase each by a certain goal percentage? How does this teach the manager to be on top of service levels and how can they do the same with their staff? Should we have a chart that ensures progress? Perhaps we can use some spreadsheets that can be easily analyzed and taught to your managers and then to employees in the department? I used this particular approach as a service leader/manager in a branded property, and always surpassed the delivery service goal, regardless of turnover, as we managed all of these concepts and taught our staff how to watch for these items. As an “outside consultant” the staff members would be more open to ask me questions and I was amazed to see how the property was always in the top 2 or 3 in their respectable market/region. What I realized after taking some of these employees aside to chat about progress and brainstorm some concepts to further improve this, as this is always a good opportunity to apply continuous improvement, we realized how much motivated and honest they would be with yet how more motivated and passionate they were about their role as a hospitality team member.

The next way of perhaps doing this is by taking the absolute time to capture detailed information on situations or moments of truth that occur in the hospitality establishment. With technology these days, we can video tape the situation if possible, and use this particular information, either written or perhaps videotaped, and used alongside in trainings/courses to demonstrate scenarios that any employee may run into and brainstorm solutions to have a proactive attitude towards seeking a solution that will create a win/win for both guest and property. The suggestion to ensure that there is also a consistent opportunity to have enough service training material would be to use actual situations that can be written or recorded soon after it took place. It is recommended that both positive and negative moments of truth are used for this.

Speaking of technology, as we were discussing above the use of video, do we also tape our training meetings so we can also use for ongoing training or reference as well?

Also, where may we be going in terms of costs when hiring/outsourcing these services? What are potential owners thinking of doing at this time? This was one of the main concerns which is affecting the reason why we are looking into resolving this issue. Are we more geared towards hiring the service educator or trainer to come to the property or would the concepts of creating training videos that can be used for multiple sessions, as well as perhaps creating customized videos for the pretty something that can work as well? Perhaps we may conclude that be best way to deliver such a system would be either via online or even by creating a hybrid course session.

You may wonder, could this be a possible positive situation or will the consultant/educator not remain in line with the goals, vision and standards that the hospitality entity pretty much represent? This needs to be addressed, as there is also the need to ties this in as well. Keep in mind that we are simply adding a new approach of theoretical concepts that will motivate, including the educator in this case. Trust is also a major concern as information may be spilled, yet the confidentially of this should be respected and well maintained. I have found as well that some properties have not allowed a whole lot of detailed involvement due to this, for fear of information spillage. However, a good way to approach the consultant and develop a trustworthy relationship is by meeting, talking about the concepts that may be needed to be touched on and perhaps even allowing a seminar where you can have this consultant/educator as a guest speaker, so they can be introduced, and people can remember them.

3. Utilize Social Media Effectively (According to Company Policy)

Another recommendation that may still be somewhat touchy, based on your policy of social media, is to create a professional field on each employee, or at least allow for this to be done, as long as the policies are transparent. Allow employees to join these hospitality professional sites, and have them participate in ongoing service and hospitality discussions as a part of leaning more ideas that they can be bought to the establishment, as this again, will be viewed as employees dedicated to grow within your company.

All of these ideas can be potential items that can bring your service levels to more desirable and reasonable levels, as your main goal is to maintain customers that are returning, spending a reasonable amount (no matter what market segments it may be, corporate, groups or leisure) and also demonstrate that your staff is well educated and professional in the field of hospitality. I can also add that this may increase the chances of employees looking forward to a career with your establishment, your management company or with the corporation. This is important as there are more and more positions that will be needed to be filled in the future, as we are seeing currently that markets are starting to come up. Start early to retain employees by adding these valued services and your employees will help the hospitality establishment retain your income source (external customers).

Marco Albarran is the founder and president of Remarkable Hospitality, Inc., an international consulting, training and educational firm that specializes in assisting hospitality companies to perform successfully by developing and continuously improving service standards. He also serves as a hospitality instructor and subject matter expert for various universities. Before launching Remarkable Hospitality, Inc., Mr. Albarran was with HVS International, working on national and international consulting projects, including market and feasibility studies for proposed and existing lodging facilities. Mr. Albarran can be contacted at 561-542-6326 or malbarran@remarkablehospitality.com Extended Bio...

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