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Hospitality: Service with a Smile
March 19, 2008
Looking to teach workers to reach beyond quality service, so customers are left with a glowing memory of your restaurant or hotel? Check out these tips for targeted learning and growth opportunities.
By Margery Weinstein
The first lesson for hospitality trainers about showing workers what it takes to provide a great experience is that it doesn't require luxury, says Diana Oreck, vice president, Global Learning & Leadership Center at Training Top 10 Hall of Famer The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. Her company's hotels are renowned for their upscale ambiance, but Oreck says the most important points about its customer service have nothing to do with extravagance.
"When people think about providing legendary service, they tend to get hung up on [the idea that] you can only do it if you're spending a great deal of money," says Oreck, who explains that, on the contrary, Ritz-Carlton believes there is a formula to superior service that doesn't require a large budget. "You start with attention to detail, plus kindness and connection with customers and employees, plus lack of flawed process."
For Ritz-Carlton employees, trainers guide employees (or "ladies and gentlemen," as the company calls them) to memorable service with its "Three Steps of Service." This primer reminds workers of the basics, such as offering a "warm and sincere" greeting using the guest's name. The company also relies on its employees' good judgment rather than providing them with scripts to guide communication with guests. "We now are managing to outcomes, and the outcome is a happy guest," says Oreck. "We don't care how you get there—as long as it's moral, legal, and ethical—but we want you to use your genuine talent, we want you to do what we call 'radar on, antenna up,' which means staying in the moment so you can read what the guest wants."
But to recognize what guests need before they have to ask for it requires an alert mind and not doing tasks on autopilot. Oreck suggests helping employees train themselves to stay sharp with activities such as mind games. For instance, give workers pictures with hidden images and have them practice picking out the hard-to-see figures.
Along with an alert brain, Oreck says effective hospitality employees look for ways to connect emotionally with guests or customers. Does the person in front of you happen to be wearing a logo of some kind?" Oreck offers as example. "If they are, you can start up a conversation about that product."
The key is ensuring that guests or customers don't feel like just another nameless face walking through your door. "It's all about personalization," says Oreck. "It's about providing a unique, personal, memorable experience, and what you can do within your own environment to make that happen."
Room for Growth
When it comes to creating incentives for hospitality employees to stay engaged in their jobs, and do superior work, don't underestimate the value of helping them develop their careers, says Mary Jo Dolasinski, vice president of learning services for White Lodging Services, where development of hourly workers into management positions is key to the company's success. "Our goal is 65 percent of all promote-able positions are promoted from within," she says. "We spend quite a bit of time and energy providing career path-ing and training programs on our properties to prepare employees for leadership roles."
At White Lodging, leadership development begins with front-line workers, of which select individuals participate in the company's Leadership Development Series. The company has identified 16 core competencies, such as effective communication and financial acumen, which it looks for in new front-line hires. Customer-facing, entry-level workers who demonstrate those skills are recommended by supervisors for participation in Level One of the series, which consists of a 16-week curriculum delivered in three-hour classes to about a dozen participants. The lessons of each week focus on one particular piece of hotel management followed by a test. "Fun with Finances," for example, teaches workers how to read a profit and loss statement.
With hotels dispersed throughout the country, Dolasinski and her team put together a "training in a box" kit for the series that includes a facilitator guide, activities, handouts, and tests. About half of all participants in Level One advance to Level Two in the series, which consists of 11 classes that meet once a week for four hours. In this more advanced curriculum, topics such as scheduling of staff and budget management are explored. Ten to 15 percent of participants in Level Two graduate, with the majority of those individuals promoted to supervisor three to six months later.
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