POV - Point Of View is the mental position from which a story is observed or narrated. GPOV is the Guest Point Of View. When we look at every interaction, every process from the Guest's Point Of View.

Why is it relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries?

All hospitality and service stem from creating experiences for customers/guests. Everything we do should be aimed at creating lasting value and fulfilling the customer need.

Sometimes, however, over a period of time, processes become more team/operations-oriented, rather than guest-oriented. It then becomes paramount to relook at these processes with a fresh pair of eyes, especially the guests' so that we can eliminate, change, upgrade the process.

More Detail on the topic

Think of a big customer-facing process, and then look at it or go through it from a guest's point of view.

Let's take Hotel laundry. In many hotels, a laundry slip is still used. The guest is supposed to fill it up, marking the various items and count on a piece of paper which sometimes has a self carbon so that the guest can keep a copy as proof. This is both cumbersome and irritating, to the guest.

If you saw this from a GPOV, you would realize that a lot of time we put our dirty laundry in the bag just after taking a bath. We then need to remove the dirty laundry and count it again to fill in that sheet. Why would anyone want to do that, just after getting dressed and about to leave for a meeting/work?

Can we then think about making this easier, better for the Guest?

This can be looked at in two ways:

1. Incremental Change - small improvements

• Increase the font size on the forms

• Make the forms Index Card sized

• Instead of big form for all possible items, make small ones specifically for the type of clothing etc.

2. Quantum Change - Rethink - Make it easy

• Reduce categories. Instead of all types of items listed with varying prices, have one or two prices for all types. Then it is only about the total number of pieces and maybe the guest can just scribble that on the laundry bag itself.

• Let the guest just dump all the laundry on the bed and when you collect it, send the guest a quick message with the laundry bag contents listed. If there is a discrepancy, the guest can reply, if not, it's all good.

Just thinking about what the guest feels, sees, goes through, can unlock remarkable innovation and value.

Actionable Insights

Go through every process as a Guest.

Team Exercise - Playback Theatre

Playback Theatre is an original form of improvisational theatre in which audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot.

For our purposes, we will do this with Customer / Guest Stories. Guest interactions with the product or the service.

HOW TO DO IT

• Get your team to sit together in a circle.

• Ask one team member to recount/share a guest experience story. For example, a guest called the front desk because he thought he felt an earthquake.

• After the story is shared, get team members to enact, retell the story by acting the scene out. Use as many actors are required. For the above example, one team member plays the role of the guest, the other of the front desk agent.

• From time to time, pause the play and discuss the emotion being played out. Let the team talk about it. For the above example, it could be fear, reassurance etc.

Do this with as many stories - positive or negative, as you like.

Want to make this WOW?

Get your favourite / regular guests to participate in these workshops. Let them exaggerate some of the things that irritate or baffle them about your processes.

If you read this till the very end, here is a special something for you. You can reach out to me to discuss any process you like. I will also be happy to conduct a workshop on this with you and your team. This is completely FREE. p.bedi@eclathospitality.com