June 09, 2022

Eclat Insights | The Frequency Illusion. Ideas On How To Use This Amazing Psychological Process Proactively

June 09, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

Frequency Illusion: Once you notice a phenomenon, you believe it happens a whole lot.

The Frequency Illusion is a result of two well-known psychological processes, selective attention (noticing things that are salient to us, disregarding the rest) and confirmation bias (looking for things that support our hypotheses, disregarding potential counterevidence) - Arnold M. Zwicky, Stanford University

The most common example cited for this is when you buy a new car, you start noticing it everywhere.

Why is it relevant to Leaders & Managers?

You can use the frequency illusion to your advantage by “priming” your brain to notice the kinds of things that are important to you and that you want to focus on.

Try this simple exercise: think of the colour red & close your eyes for a moment. What other images popped up in your head? Now, look around the room and see how the colour red pops at you.

Actionable Insights

Prime yourself with keywords. Once those keywords have your psychological attention, you will see them everywhere.

Pick words that represent your values or that are an important indication of work success for you.
Make a stack of such keywords or concepts.
Pick one out of the stack every day and spend some time focusing on the keyword.

Now start your day, you are primed. Once you are primed for a keyword, and it sits on top of your conscious mind, you will see it everywhere.

Let's say your keyword for the day is 'innovation'.

Write down as much of the free association that happened in your mind when you looked at the word or thought about it. Do not judge your thoughts. Just take notes.
Take a moment to write down what that word means to you, and how important it is for you and your work.
Find your team living that value or keyword. When you meet your team or do a property round or shop floor walk, you will start noticing 'innovation' or some form of it anyway. Maybe someone created a new micro process that you did not know about. It would have gone unnoticed, but because you are primed, you will notice it now. Acknowledge it, the moment you recognize it.
Use it to 'catch' your people doing the right thing. Appreciate them when you do catch them.
Use the keyword in meetings, and in your speech.
Use it in your one-on-ones or even in your email communication that day. I love using the email signature feature. Let me know if you need help setting it up. p.bedi@eclathospitality.com
Ask questions with the keyword. For example:

'What was the last innovation we did?'
'What new innovation did you like in another service or product?'
'What does or what could innovation look like at your work?'

8. Use the keyword to color or filter your processes or services. Have a list of key processes? Do a quick check against each process for the keyword, in this case, 'innovation'.

9. Do a google search with the keyword and just spend a few minutes browsing the results, OR use the keyword as a hashtag and check out some social media on it.

Want to make this WOW?

Two suggestions, in opposite directions.

1. Have the same keyword for the entire leadership team. You can do this for a day or a week. Having everyone primed and looking at the world through the same lens even for a moment can be a game-changer.

2. Go the other route and let everyone on your leadership team pick their own keyword for the day/week and run this their way. When we did this internally, I was looking at something from a 'cost' perspective, while my colleague was looking at the same idea from a 'revenue' perspective. It was a hilarious discussion.

I invite you to take 2 mins and do this right now. Action this immediately and you will love it. Just make a list of 5 keywords for yourself. See that red pen in the corner? Yup, that's the one you were primed for.

Prabhjot
Bedi

is a Hospitality Ideator. A process innovator, trainer, and professional speaker, he has worked with the Taj Group of Hotels, conducted training programs for hospitality leaders, launched a National Council Accredited Hospitality Institute as Principal, successfully launched and sold three hospitality businesses. He now assists hospitality leaders and educators in creating superlative services and products. He also edits the very popular www.hospemag.com - the largest hospitality career e-mag

May 26, 2022

Eclat Insights | The Intangibles Of Sincere Service

May 26, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

There is a wonderful research paper titled 'Analysis of Tangible and Intangible Hotel Service Quality Components' by Dražen Marić, Veljko Marinković, Radenko Marić, Darko Dimitrovski4

Here is what they did. They asked 220 respondents in Serbia about 33 service quality attributes (both tangible and intangible attributes).

Here are the attributes:

The external appearance of the hotel is modern.
The hotel is excellently located.
The hotel has top-of-the-range equipped reception desks.
The hotel has a visually appealing brochure.
The hotel has a well-designed lobby.
The hotel has clean rooms.
The hotel has spacious rooms.
The hotel room has a minibar.
The hotel has an appealing restaurant and bar.
The beds, pillows and bedding.
The hotel rooms have comfortable bathrooms.
The hotel has a pool.
The hotel has a sauna.
The hotel has sports facilities.
Business lounges are always at guests’ disposal.
The hotel regularly maintains the hotel lawn and turf.
The hotel room has a TV set.
The seating arrangement in the restaurant and bars is good.
The hotel’s food and drinks are of high quality.
Any promises made to guests are met within the agreed deadline.
Hotel staff invest sincere effort to solve the guests’ problems.
Hotel bills are flawless.
The hotel always provides service like the first time.
The hotel staff provide guests with all required information.
The staff provide fast and immediate service.
The staff are willing to help the guests at any moment.
The staff’s behaviour is reassuring.
The hotel staff is courteous to the guests.
The staff devote adequate attention to each guest.
The hotel staff appear to give priority to what is best for the guests.
The hotel staff understand the guests’ specific needs.
Check-in and check-out are efficient.
The hotel provides full security for its guests.

The results will vary for country, culture, destination, level of service etc, so the specific findings of this research may not apply to you or your hotel. What does apply, however, is the tracking of intangibles.

A service experience is made up of both tangibles and intangibles. You can use one of your senses to interact with a tangible resource in the real world. While you can 'feel' both, intangibles do not have a so-called 'real' existence. It's all in your mind.

So, for example, a restaurant or pub is a real space, with furniture, lights, music etc, and these are tangible. The ambience on the other hand is what you feel, and intangible.

Your people are tangible, the 'care' they offer, is intangible.

Let's take one such attribute and drill down.

Hotel staff invest sincere effort to solve the guests’ problems.

Notice how, the measure is not the number of complaints, but rather a more esoteric 'sincere' effort. The focus is on making the guest feel seen and heard. A sincere effort may not result in a perfect outcome, but the effort gets points. How do you demonstrate sincerity? Can we track it? Here's an idea. If you keep a track of the number of complaints at your hotel for any given day, then add a little column that says 'did the team meet the guest in person?'. With phones, apps, it is easy to get complaints and not realise that there is a person facing a problem on the other end.

Actionable Insight

Find a tangible and an intangible for every process or outcome.

example, Fond Farewell.

Tangible:

A bill with no errors. Track this measure. How many times does the guest notice and point out an error that then needs to be corrected? This can be tracked easily.
Bags are in the lobby/car before the guest has settled the bill. Again, easy to track.
Front Desk / Guest Relations walks the guest to the porch. Bids them farewell. You can even add a very specific measure 'did the team wave goodbye?'.
Some resorts, like to make sure there are at least 3 team members wearing different uniforms saying goodbye.
A farewell goodie bag. Water, a fruit or cookie etc.

Intangible:

Warm farewell. Measuring that is a little trickier.

It has been suggested that since 'smiling' was an integral part of warm service, we should measure how many times team members smile. You can measure this. You can also measure how many times (as a percentage of interactions) do they smile at their colleagues. However, a smile is sincere only when it travels to the eyes. That should be the true measure.

Maybe we can track our success by the guest behaviour? How many guests thanked the team at the porch? Or how many waved back from the car?

You will need to get creative. Go back to simpler times and remember how a host measured if we liked the food they served. Remember how she would say 'but you haven't eaten at all! or 'You haven't taken another helping', or 'You still have food left on your plate'. The measure was not with a rating on a scale of 1 - 10. If you really liked the food, her eyes sparkled with pride. Help your teams, find that joy in the service of your guests.

May 19, 2022

Eclat Insights | Using The Competition To Get Better. This Is What You Should Be Doing

May 19, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

1. Set up your competitive set. The most common approach includes a combination of location, level of service, price band.

Location is the most obvious one. If you are a business hotel in Gurgaon, then this works very well. If a business traveller has a meeting in Gurgaon, she is not going to be looking at hotels in Noida.

To some extent, this works for resorts too, though, at the high end - uber-luxury, your competitive set could be halfway across the world.

Level of service

Most hotels categorise themselves into a star rating model from 1 - 5. Once they identify themselves in a particular "star" category, that pretty much becomes the filter for competition. +- 1 is also considered. So a very good 4-star hotel could compete with a badly managed/run 5-star hotel.

Airbnb and other platforms changed the game. The star category was thrown out of the window and replaced with visuals that appeal. If the customer/guest felt something looked amazing, it was 5 stars.

Another change was the 'guest review' mechanism on social media/platforms. google review, TripAdvisor etc. These use the same 5 point scale, but the stars mean very different things from the categorisation based on amenities. Suddenly you could have a stand-alone, no brand property, with no pool, no speciality restaurant, no-frills ranked higher than a full-service hotel. 5- star rating, has replaced, 5- the star category.

Price

or price band since almost all hotels have dynamic revenue management now. If there is another hotel in your catchment area/vicinity that matches your rates (even if it is their low and your high or vice versa), the hotel is in your competitive set.

Start with these. You can always get creative and add size, banquet spaces, food & beverage etc.

In some areas/cities, due to the nature of your business (property), you might land up with a lot of competition. I suggest you trim it down to 7. Be ruthless at this stage. You will not be able to keep track if you keep your competitive set too large.

2. Set up what you would like to track

ARR or REVPARs are the most commonly tracked metric. Some savvy operators track costs (like HR from keeping a track of salaries etc, or info from suppliers). It makes sense, this is what bosses want to see, can be exchanged easily and understood. Quantity Of business, measured. You can also use this information to see if you have positive market penetration. If you are not doing this right now, I suggest you talk to the leadership at your competitive set and start sharing this information.

If, for myriad reasons, this is not possible, then have someone check rates on your preferred travel website and use that as a proxy.

Quality Of Business, however, is another story. Some intelligence is gathered, like company accounts, events hosted etc. This might give you an indication if you are getting the same 'quality' of clients as your competition. If the VPs are being put up in your competition and you are getting all the interns/entry-level, even if the rate is the same, you are playing second fiddle.

Make sure your sales team feeds you market intelligence. This should be part of their KRAs.

What To Do:

Track websites of your competitive set. Apart from the design, look, feel, keep a track of special promotions, events, announcements etc. Join their mailing list.
Follow & track social media accounts. This is just a wealth of information.
Track reviews of your competitive set ruthlessly. I added ruthlessly. Here is an example:

source

What I like about the reviewer, is that he still gave the location a 3.

If this is your competition, your sales team needs to be carrying this review to all pitches.

Don't use reviews only for a sales advantage. Use them to improve your processes and services. This is your TG. If the guests of your competitive set are unhappy about something at the hotel they currently use, you could improve your processes to focus on the issues that are highlighted. You can also run a targeted social media campaign talking about how you offer the services/amenities.
You can add services or create new processes to solve/address these unmet needs. here is an example:

Source

As a competing hotel, you should ensure that at Check-In the guest can see enough staff around.

Get your teams to experience the competition. It is an expense that will pay rich dividends. See this review for example:

source - First, when was the last time a guest booked for 6 days and stayed for 21 at your hotel? Now, Imagine sending your Front Office team to stay a night and experience the legendary hospitality of Ajay & Mukesh as mentioned by the guest. Maybe personalized service is what keeps guests coming to this hotel and staying there. Do your people get named in reviews?

Think of these are mystery audits, but for your competition. Let your people use elaborate checklists, take lots of photos, videos, and interact with staff, but more importantly let them come back and present/share the details with the entire team.

PROTIP - Ensure they share the good and great before they go into everything that was wrong and reinforce we-are-amazing. We want to learn and improve.

Bonus Ideas on defining the competitive set

If your sales team keeps running into the sales team from another hotel at client offices, they are a competition!
Ask your bookers/agents, what hotel they would use if you were sold out. The answers are your competition.
Ask your guests, what hotels they would use if you were unavailable. The answers are your competition.

--END OF INSIGHT--

### How do I get more reviews on Google?

While I have some ideas of my own, here is something from Google https://support.google.com/hotelprices/answer/7219055?hl=en

Create and share a link guests can use to leave a review.
When guests check out, invite them to leave a review on Google. Consider creating a short link or Quick Response (QR) code that makes it easy for users to get to your review page.
After check out, follow up with guests and send a reminder in any of your post-stay communications.

As always, I am on p.bedi@eclathospitality.com. Reach out and we can discuss your competitive set, what you should track and how to get more and better reviews from guests.

Prabhjot Singh Bedi

is a Hospitality Ideator. A process innovator, trainer, and professional speaker, he has worked with the Taj Group of Hotels, conducted training programs for hospitality leaders, launched a National Council Accredited Hospitality Institute as Principal, successfully launched and sold three hospitality businesses. He now assists hospitality leaders and educators in creating superlative services and products. He also edits the very popular www.hospemag.com - the largest hospitality career e-mag

May 12, 2022

Eclat Insights | Serendipity In Service. What A Delight!

May 12, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

“Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen but thinking what nobody else has thought” – Albert Szent-Györgyi

Serendipity is commonly used in reference to ‘the happy accident’. Serendipity is defined as “The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident” (Foster and Ford, 2003).

The eighteenth-century writer Horace Walpole originally coined the term “serendipity” to describe, in a Persian fairy tale, the idea of people “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of” (Walpole 1754, p. 407)

Recall a time when you heard a song come across the radio or stumbled upon a favourite movie while channel surfing. Chances are you felt more enjoyment from the song or movie when you landed on it by “accident” compared to choosing the same song or movie from your streaming menu. These happy accidents become “happy” because they lead to feelings of serendipity, which research shows heighten enjoyment. When a product, service, or experience is positive, unexpected, and involves some degree of chance, this generates congruent feelings. source

Consumers will feel that the encounter was a good surprise, make attributions to chance, and feel lucky that it happened — “feelings of serendipity."

Actionable Insights

1. Do The Unexpected.

Unexpectedness is the cognitive process responsible for the feeling of surprise (Reisenzein, Horstmann, Schutzwohl2019)

some ideas:

Add an item to the conference lunch menu that was never discussed or requested.
Give guests a goodbye pouch - a snack and some flavoured water will also do.
A surprise discount! - simple, randomised or spin the wheel!
A 'pick your lucky coupon' - surprise offers for other services in the hotel/resort/property.

The quantum is not important here. Just the joy of getting something unexpected.

p.s. If you collect birthdays of guests, wishing them on their birthday or offering a cake or cookie if they dine with you is no longer unexpected. It is the bare minimum expectation of a guest.

2. Have An Element Of Luck

Most hotels upgrade based on loyalty tier, repeat purchase, designation, important company account etc. If hotels are sold out on one category of rooms, upgrade decisions are given a lot of thought.

We suggest that once in a while, randomly pick guests and upgrade them. Let the service leader truly not know the 'why' and let the guest also attribute it to 'luck'.

For an event to generate feelings of serendipity, it must be attributed to some chance or, in the case of chance that leads to positive experiences, luck. This occurs because one consequence of feeling surprised is the search for attribution (Reisenzein, Horstmann, Schu¨tzwohl 2019)

3. Make Mistakes

Serendipity may benefit from a degree of sloppiness.

Once in a while, send an order to the wrong room or the wrong table. Then when the guest says they did not order it, offer it with your compliments and apologies. "We made an error and we would like you to keep this". A lot of your guests will share the 'lucky' look with each other.

4. Offer Truly Random Choices

If you aren't recording and using guest preferences, please start doing so immediately. Every app is already doing this and as we mentioned in the insight Customer Expectations - The last best experience that your guest has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experiences they want with you.

But here is the twist though, once you know that a guest likes / prefers something, once in a while offer random choices as well, not just what you know. For example, fruits. Let's say a guest tells you or you figure out that they like bananas. Please make sure bananas are in the room every day, but can you keep a small portion of kiwi one day? Berries? Nuts?

If you are using AI to generate your customer recommendations, add an element of 'completely random' choice to the results.

An example of this could be showing a special rate for a random date in the future when a guest enters their travel dates on your website or showing special rates for a property in a completely different city from the one they mentioned. Just one such result in the whole list, please. Do not overdo this.

Want to make this WOW?

Do this for your teams.

Relationships that span groups of individuals that would not normally interact may increase an organization’s propensity to access, absorb, and exploit diverse sets of ideas. Geletkanycz and Hambrick (1997). Once every week, do a random seating in your staff cafeteria.
Invite a team member to a meeting that has nothing to do with them. Let them sit in. No expectations. If they have something to add brilliant, else, no problemo.
Celebrate Uselessness! Have awards or points or rewards for team members who come up with completely useless ideas. A ton of great stuff was invented from such ideas.
Change the route that your team needs to take in order to clock in and reach the lockers / uniform room or office. At random, make them walk through engineering, the kitchens, the banquets, the spa etc. You can do this for routes taken to go to the staff cafe for meals. Leave treasure hunt style loot on the routes.

If you enjoyed this, I am sure you will enjoy - Why Small Experiments Are So Powerful For Your Career & Customers. Start Today.

Create serendipitous moments. As always, we are here to help. reach out on +919872000604 or p.bedi@eclathospitality.com

---end of insight--

Serendipity in science:

The best-known chance discovery in science is the 1928 discovery of penicillin by a Scottish bacteriologist (1881-1955). Fleming was studying the Staphylococcus bacterium and noticed that a blue-green mould had contaminated a petri dish, killing off all the surrounding bacteria in the culture.

Earlier, in 1922, Fleming had accidentally shed a tear into a bacterial sample and noted that the spot where the tear landed was free of the bacteria that grew all around it. After conducting tests he concluded that tears contain an enzyme, lysozyme, that can fight off minor bacterial growth.

May 05, 2022

Eclat Insights | A Craftsman Mindset To Service

May 05, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

craftsman - /ˈkrɑːf(t)smən/ - a worker skilled in a particular craft.

Welcoming guests may seem like a no-brainer; you just have to stand at the entrance to a building or an outlet and well, welcome people. When you try to do it though, you realise there is a lot more to it.

First and foremost, you will need to smile, not too much, and not too little. The smile will need to travel to your eyes. You will need to make eye contact, again, not too much and not too little. You will need to bend slightly forward; too ramrod straight and you will not seem hospitable and too much you will lose sight of the guests. You will need to welcome groups that walk up together and you will need to very quickly decide the order or hierarchy of the group. Families bring even more decisions; do we welcome the kids first, then the grown-ups?

You need to take into account hand gestures. Open palm, facing towards the interior? Do we move it in a wave-like fashion, do we repeat the motion for every guest?

Detail-oriented companies go to the extent of specifying what needs to be done at what distance. The SOPs advise that when a guest approaches you, you need to make eye contact and smile when the guest is 15 feet away. No need to say anything at this stage as she is not in the clear audio range. As she approaches, you should say your welcome words, when she is 5 feet away.

Welcome words. What can you say that will capture your essence, your brand, your locale and the time or tone of the day? Should you say something in the local language or should you use your guest's preferred language? Do you want the words to create excitement or calm?

Should there be a specific smell at the door or entrance? A number of hotels made sure that the fresh baking scent wafted into the lobby to tickle the guests' appetites and pique their interest. Some outlets may choose to use a smell that defines the food or concept on offer. A spa lets the tone with aroma.

Music. Loud, blasting speakers at the entrance tell you exactly what to expect inside. A zen waterfall acoustic mix sends a very different message.

Uniform. What should the welcome party wear? The first human representative of everything that you have created, what should she be wearing that lets your guest know that they made the right choice today.

There's still more to consider, lighting, entrance door design, choice of building material, use of glass, signage and more.

A Craftsman Mindset focuses on crafting every detail and then improving it over time. Recognising that every aspect of a particular task is a skill that can be identified and then improved.
A Craftsman Mindset acknowledges that one needs to unlearn, learn again and then spend time practising the skill.
A Craftsman Mindset knows that excellence can be crafted.
A Craftsman Mindset knows that how you do one thing, is how you do everything.

Actionable Idea

Take any task that up until now you felt was just another task. A task, so simple that you never really thought it could add any joy.
Either shoot a video of someone doing this task or even better attempt the task yourself.
Study the video, in slo-mo. Study every frame if you have to.
In each frame, ask the question - what emotion is this creating for the guest?
Now, change something in that frame to create the emotion you want.

Want to make this WOW?

Craft amazing experiences for your team.

For example: if you offer uniforms to your team, consider putting notes in the pockets that they can find, read and enjoy. If you do not want to put the messages in pockets, add them to the hangar. Every time your team collects a uniform, you will find them looking forward to that little note. It will make this routine, boring task into an interaction.

Once this is crafted, you can always craft something better. This mindset asks that of you. Imagine running a 'collect all XXX' game. Whoever collects notes of a certain type wins something. You just created excitement and adventure at the very start of your team's day. Can you imagine how great a day it is going to be if your team is actually looking forward to getting their uniform?

Share the most boring, common, non-excitement task you think you have in the comments and let's see if we can all use the craftsman mindset to make it better!

April 28, 2022

Eclat Insights | Success Lists Are What You Need. Put this on your To-Do List!

April 28, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.” ~ Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right

We are big fans of pictorial SOPs & checklists (much better than the text checklists we see everywhere), but what we see missing from all of them is the success bit. What should happen when one of your team members tick marks the final item on a checklist?

Imagine this, your Housekeeping team member checks a 40 point checklist for the room. Every detail is on the list. Compliments on making a great list, but does she step back from the checklist once it is done and see the room as a guest would?

A Success List would include a little 'smile', an 'ah!' at the end of the checklist. If the Housekeeper does not look at the whole room and go 'nice!' then your SOP has failed.

Success Lists is an Idea from ― Gary Keller, The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list—a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.

Extraordinary results in a service setting produce extraordinary word-of-mouth, loyalty, and brand affinity.

What Should You Do?

Individual Success Lists

Help everyone in your team create their own success lists. You can probably do these for designations or roles, but we prefer a more individual approach. Use this opportunity to add things that speak to someone's strengths directly. Give them the opportunity to flex and use that unique strength at work. You get a happy team member and an amazing customer experience.

Example

A Food & Beverage Associate / Supervisor

Traditional Checklist

set up table
check back area
offer menu (open it before offering)

Success Checklist

Make one guest laugh every day.
Introduce one guest to one team member (not just names, with something insightful)

e.g. Mr Bedi, please allow me to introduce Aditya. He recently joined our team and is a huge F1 fan, though I don't think he is a Ferrari fan like you. After hellos, say to Aditya 'Mr Bedi is a longstayer with us and you must ensure he gets ice water every time'.

Get one table to leave at least 20% tip. (this can also be a team success list item. You can make sure the entire team - everyone, showers so much care and attention, the guests are bamboozled. You can also increase this as your team starts hitting these goals. 50%, 100%, 200%. It has been done!)

Team Success Lists

Take it up a notch. 10X the insight.

Get everyone to contribute to the same success.
Make everyone's success to create another teammate's success. WE LOVE THIS ONE!

So essentially, you create a little chart like this >

Then you ensure every box is ticked.

Your success goals can be as wacky as you need them to be. Live your brand, live your values through these success goals.

Some amazing ones we have seen:

Upgrade 100 guests in a month. (not upsell, upgrade. The hotel decided instead of letting better rooms go vacant, upgrading guests would either get them to book a higher category on their next visit or at the very least create a 'shareable' story)
Appreciate everyone on the team at least once a week, by finding something good they did.
Find / Notice at least 3 preferences for guests who stay or dine more than 3 times a month.

Take five minutes & do this right now!

Write down 3 things that would be amazing if your team could do regularly. Don't worry about how or not. Just make a note of 3 results or actions or outcomes that would be extraordinary.

Now share these with me on p.bedi@eclathospitality.com and let me help you make these into fun success todos.

April 07, 2022

Eclat Insights | Why 'I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work' is the first question to ask yourself, and of your team

April 07, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

This is from Nine Lies About Work by Ashley Goodall and Marcus Buckingham. While there is lots more to unpack from the book, I think this is the question to start with.

Take a moment and answer the question for yourself.

I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.

Notice that the minute you think about it, the very first thoughts are either 'what are my strengths?' or 'I don't do anything like that at work'. Both are very real responses.

Now, imagine you are asking this of your team. Take a moment and think about what they might say?

Why is it relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries?

Nothing in a service organisation is accomplished by an individual. A simple customer interaction may look like a one-on-one, but to make sure it accomplishes the desired outcome, will require teamwork.

Teams are made up of humans (some automation, bots, AI, but not really sentient for now). Humans have personalities, strengths, weaknesses, fears, desires etc. A workplace may make a spirited effort to take the individual out of the equation (think uniforms, standard operating processes, fines for deviation, etc), but we all know the human inside lives. It's just that, for 9 hours a day, it shrugs it's shoulders a lot.

Let me share a personal story. I was a Duty Manager, and we were trying to solve a BellDesk problem. I happen to lead the meeting, with the team, which went nowhere. I finally barked some orders and they all nodded their heads. The idea failed spectacularly on implementation. As I wondered what happened(I was sure my idea was awesome), I joined a group in conversation in the cafeteria. They were talking about a plan for an upcoming festival and one of my Bellboys was detailing the whole effort. Everyone listened to him with rapt attention. The plan was detailed, it came from experience and also had a lot of creative elements. I caught up with him later and asked him about the event. He was animated and excited in sharing all the details. I could see clearly that he really enjoyed doing this. I could also see his strength in organising and creating solutions. A couple of days later, I went to him with the problem statement and asked his opinion. He was hesitant, but then shared his thoughts. Over a few more conversations, he laid out a detailed plan of action, some inspired ideas and even took it to the rest of the team to get buy-in. We executed it so well.

I share this simply to highlight the following for all service leaders & managers:

Most of our team members are functioning human beings who in their 'outside' lives in the real world are probably leaders in their community, society, friend circle or family. The person you think is clueless, is probably the one getting calls from her friends to know what she thinks they should do.
Everyone has a strength. It may not be apparent to you (as leaders we tend to assume the position in hierarchy = competence. The Peter Principle tells us differently).
Strengths need situations. All superheroes need someone in trouble or something to happen to be able to use and hence demonstrate their strengths. Imagine Spiderman just climbing tall buildings and swinging around.

What to do then?

Once you accept that everyone is someone in their lives, that everyone has a strength(or many), and that strengths need situations, do the following:

Storytelling. Humans love stories. Have a regular storytelling time/activity with your team where one team member should share a story about the extraordinary life of another team member. Get Ghazal to talk about how great Aman is, via the story where once Aman organised water tankers for the entire neighbourhood.
Make a list of your team and start making a note of strengths against each name. Actively look for these strengths. If someone in your team keeps bringing up the future in your team meetings, maybe they are Futuristic. Remember that when you want to do Blue Ocean thinking. A good list is [here].
Create situations so that your team members can use their strengths. You will need to be creative with this. Don't get locked into a job description. Just because the designation says 'onethingonly', does not mean that is all they can do and that is all that they are.

Let's get back to the question you should ask and track - I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.

Gallup analysis reveals that people who use their strengths every day are three times more likely to report having an excellent quality of life, six times more likely to be engaged at work, 8% more productive and 15% less likely to quit their jobs.

It does not need to be all the time and all the tasks that you do.
It does not need to be all your strengths, all the time.
Any one strength, used even once a day at work, can make a big difference.

Want to make this WOW?

Create a 'strength buddy' system. People can make as many pairs as they need. They can either pair up with someone they think has the same strength or a strength they admire/want to inculcate. Let them share this publicly with the entire team. Let anyone call upon the strength of another. Think Avengers.

March 31, 2022

Eclat Insights | Using If-Then Thinking For Service Design

March 31, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

I was going to write a catchy title like 'If you implement this insight, then you will have awesome service processes'. Then, I didn't.

Instead, If you read this insight, then you will have found a simple yet powerful tool to make your processes and people response-able, nimble and fun!

If-Then plans (Gollwitzer 1999), where people commit themselves to doing a certain thing in a specific situation are commonly used in health psychology. These self-made plans capture pre-specified responses if a certain situation occurs. Deciding such things in advance reduces the demands you put on your willpower.

Why is it relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries

Our SOPs are broken. They are too perfect, too linear. Everything in an SOP seems to happen in a very predetermined way. These are great for training, but not so much for the reality of work.
Situational awareness and response to a guest query, request or action can be the difference between average and superlative service.
Thinking about situations, enhances its cognitive accessibility, directing attention to the situation and making it easier to detect and respond to.
Linking the situation to the intended behaviour creates a strong associative link which automates the initiation of the behaviour.

Examples

For A Check-In, a front desk team member sets the following If, Then behaviour intention:

If a guest looks tired or sad, then I will ask him for a tea/coffee/drink.
If a guest has a child with them, which was not mentioned on the reservation, then I will ask if they need an extra bed. If they need an extra bed, then I will ensure Housekeeping sets it up along with amenities - bath, water, kids specials.

Actionable Insights

How to do this?

First, explore the Ifs for your processes.

The Ifs are the situations you want to remind your teams about:

If the guest is looking around the restaurant frantically...
If the guest starts pacing or is agitated at check out..
If the guest is unable to make up their mind on what to order..

Then explore and list the Thens

Answer the question ‘what might we do in response to the Ifs?’,

…Then I’ll immediately go over and ask if there is anything I can assist them with.
…Then I will ask the guest if they are in a hurry.
…Then I will let them know house specials or what the chef recommends.

Repeat this for as many Ifs as you like.

How To Make This Wow?

WOW, Idea 1 - Overcoming the obstacle:

Think of this as the next level for If, Then plans.

Example: A front desk associate may set up the following If, Then

If, I am helping a guest at the front desk, Then, I will give them my full attention.
If, while I am helping the guest and the phone rings, Then, I will ....

Creating a solution to that particular situation - of the phone ringing - is overcoming the obstacle. Possible options could be:

let the phone ring
let someone else answer the phone
forward to call to another extension

Wow, Idea 2 - Do If, Then for multiple levels in the same situation.

Example

If the guest is unable to make up their mind on what to order..

…Then I will let them know house specials or what the chef recommends.

But If the guest does not like my suggestions, then I will....

Wow, Idea 3 - Do If, Then for your team members or Internal Processes.

If my team member looks sad, Then I will....

If my team does not meet the targets, Then I will....

March 24, 2022

Eclat Insights | IPOT & ISPT - 2 Perspectives To Empathy Explained With Real-World Service Examples

March 24, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

A perspective is a particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view.

One approach observes and infers how someone feels. This is imagine-other perspective-taking (IOPT). The other way to empathise is to put yourself into someone else's situation, this is imagine-self perspective-taking (ISPT).

IOPT - Imagine-other perspective-taking

is thinking about someone else's feelings, without taking those feelings upon yourself.
translates into imagining the thoughts and emotions of the other person

ISPT - imagine-self perspective-taking

is the traditional 'walking in a mile in someone else's shoes'.
means imagining what one’s own thoughts and emotions would be if one were in the situation of the other person

Why is it relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries?

At the very heart of a service is the act of creating, crafting and providing solutions. Solutions that are a response to stated or unstated needs. A guest's stated need might be a room to sleep in for the night, but the unstated needs are safety, no disturbance (peace), a comfortable bed, working appliances, water and maybe breakfast in the morning. Every time a guest books a hotel room, she does not need to state these.

If all service is a response to needs, wants or desires, then the ability to read, deduce and understand the needs can be a big differentiator for your business.

Learning to respond to these needs can be innovative and may create whole new categories(think AirBnB, All Day Dining, All Day Breakfast, plunge pools in rooms etc).

Using perspective, both types, you can make this into practice.

Actionable Insights with Real-World Examples

eg 1 - General Manager For A Day Concept or HOD For A Day

One employee / Team Member gets to be the Hotel General Manager or HOD for a day (shadowing)

IOPT - Imagine-other perspective

For the GM/HOD - be open to what the team member feels, pays attention to, asks, spends time on, is enamoured by or in awe of.

For the Team Member who is shadowing - ask questions, watch what the GM/HOD pays attention to, try to understand the rationale behind the decisions.

ISPT - imagine-self perspective

For the GM/HOD - appreciate that your team member may be anxious about the day. Let them know what to expect. Make them comfortable. Listen to their ideas. Let them make an actual decision. Put yourself in their shoes by remembering your early career days.

For the Team Member who is shadowing - appreciate this is a big opportunity, let the GM/HOD know you value it, ask what you can or should not do. Attend a meeting pretending to be the GM or the HOD. Fully immerse yourself into that reality.

See a real-world example of this from Hyatt

eg 2 - Let Reservation/ Sales/ Front Desk team members sleep in the hotel rooms.

They will get first-hand exposure to what a guest feels.

Make sure you give them the following:

A checklist for a proper room check. This becomes feedback for Housekeeping
A list of activities /tasks that guests usually undertake. e.g. charging phones, watching tv, using the shower, ordering food & eating it in the room, switching on / off lights, of course, sleeping in the bed.

If you do this, you will find the following:

Your team now understands why the guests are so angry when they call from the room
Your team will want you to change things in the room. If that cannot be done, they will want you to put better signage.
Your team will give much better room orientations. they will point out things that they assumed were obvious before this experience.

If as a leader you are willing to do this, I would invite you to also let the In-Room Dining / Room Service crew eat in a hotel room. Do this and you will find at least 10 things that need to be changed in your current SOPs and you will find your guest feedback from these services suddenly improving.

When we got a team to sleep in the hotel rooms, immediately, there was a change in the bed making process (the duvet was no longer tucked under the mattress as the team realised one had to wrestle it free at bedtime), water was now kept at the bedside, not on the minibar, a new master switch was added for all lights in the room (the rooms had 7 light switches), extra crockery & cutlery was added for meals. The changes continued for some time.

How To Make This Wow

Not every process needs you or your team to be ISPT (walking in someone else shoes). Most innovation, guest centricity can come from IOPT (thinking about what other's feel).

However, some solutions will only emerge if you truly immerse yourself in your guest's perspective. Wheelchair friendly facilities, allergy concerns, safety & security are among these.

If you truly want to create those amazing solutions, pick one, for example - wheelchair friendly facilities, and live your hotel, restaurant as a wheelchair-bound person. Log your experience, take videos from that POV. The perspective you gain will invaluable. Check out - https://gowheeltheworld.com/ to see how when you get it, you get it.

March 17, 2022

Eclat Insights | Effortless Service - The UNCXE Way

March 17, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

“What is Hospitality: Graciousness; the art of making people feel welcomed, comfortable, and at ease, preferably in a seemingly effortless manner.” — Abigail Charpentier, human resources VP, ARAMARK Sports, Entertainment & Conventions”

A Customer Effort Score is a metric that businesses use to measure the effort a customer has to exert to resolve issues, have their requests fulfilled, find answers to their questions, or return a purchase. Matt Dixon, at Corporate Executive Board (CEB) consulting firm, introduced CES in 2008. Gained a lot of traction after an HBR article.

Actionable Insights - The UNCXE Way

Check each process for UNCXE - UNwarranted Customer Effort

psst! - There is no full form for this term on the internet, we checked. So as far as we know, we coined this term!

How Does One Check UNCXE?

1. Record customer interactions - videos, audios and watch, listen with your team. Look for body language that displays irritation, exasperation, etc. Look for tasks or information that a customer has to repeat. Look for the effort a customer has to make just to be served.

2. Do role-plays with your team. Choose the team member who has an opinion on everything and someone who nitpicks. Ask them to be exasperated at everything. Make a note of all such moments.

Look for best practices elsewhere.

If your customers get an immediate refund from eCommerce and apps, then why does it take your business so much time to first accept a refund and then process it?

Paul Roberts, CEO of Village Hotel Club, highlights the simplicity of Amazon’s sales process. “We need to look at the customer journey, at making it frictionless”

Real-World Examples

Check-In

If you know you will need an ID proof at the time of Check-In, ask the guest to mail it to you prior to their arrival if they so choose. You can confirm the ID at the time of the physical Check-In. It can take a long time to get a copy of the ID card and have it signed by the guest. Print a copy and keep it ready for signature or if you do not want to waste resources, ask the guest to carry a self-attested copy. A faster process for everyone and a little less friction.

From Video Recordings

In restaurants that offer buffets, notice if guests need to criss-cross a lot to get to the dishes they want. Find a way to reduce all that friction.
For the hotel lobby or even an event, notice if guests are looking around wondering where the restrooms are. You either need better signage or better orientation or just some more staff to offer helpful directions.

Desserts

What can you do to make dessert ordering effortless? Yes, there is a menu that the guest can order from (QR coded ones included), but what is better is a steward or host describing a scrumptious dessert and offering to get you one.

A dessert counter or display is another way to let diners see and choose a dessert. As a guest, you just need to point.

What is even more effortless for a guest? A dessert trolley. The guest does not need to leave the table.

Sales or Reservations

Can a guest just drop a WhatsApp message saying:

"next Friday, 2 rooms, 3 nights"

If not, you need to work on your processes to make this a reality. Natural language use is the cornerstone of so many apps and programs now that very soon your guests will find it cumbersome to do it any other way.

In the example above, replace WhatsApp with any tool the customer likes to use and it should still work.

This is not to say that your reply confirming this message should be a 👍. Your confirmation can still be as detailed as you need it to be (considering it can be a legal contract, put all details in there), but do reduce the friction for the guest with a short message that might say 'done! look forward to hosting you', and then a full confirmation can follow.

To make this happen you will need a robust CRM and an omnichannel presence with the ability to seamlessly move. The guest may send the details on WhatsApp and then modify the booking using Twitter. Don't even get us started on IG. In essence, you follow your customer to the channel she is using right now. That is making the service effortless, for her.

Want to make this WOW?

While you set out to do this for your customers, work on doing this for your teams/people. If the process of getting a new A4 ream for the printer at the Front Desk includes 3 signatures on a triplicate form and a personal pretty please to the stores and purchase department, you will see that friction show up in the interactions of the Front Desk with customers.

Do this right now!

Think of a situation, with a company or a service provider that you thought would need you to lose your temper or at the very least show anger to get it done. Then when you called or visited or wrote to someone, it was done/fixed without a fuss. In fact, it was so easy and pleasant that you felt a little guilty about making it a big deal in your head.

Were you able to think of something? Do share it in the comments. It would be inspiring to us all.

Write to me at p.bedi@eclathospitality.com or WhatsApp me on +919872000604 and let me make one key process effortless for you. It would be my absolute pleasure.

Prabhjot
Bedi

is an Hospitality Ideator. A process innovator, trainer, and professional speaker, he has worked with the Taj Group of Hotels, conducted training programs for hospitality leaders, launched a National Council Accredited Hospitality Institute as Principal, successfully launched and sold three hospitality businesses. He now assists hospitality leaders and educators in creating superlative services and products. He also edits the very popular www.hospemag.com - the largest hospitality career e-mag

March 10, 2022

Eclat Insights | IPOT & ISPT - 2 Perspectives To Empathy Explained With Real-World Service Examples

March 10, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

IPOT & ISPT - 2 Perspectives To Empathy Explained With Real-World Service Examples

A perspective is a particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view.

IOPT - Imagine-other perspective-taking

is thinking about someone else's feelings, without taking those feelings upon yourself.
translates into imagining the thoughts and emotions of the other person

ISPT - imagine-self perspective-taking

is the traditional 'walking in a mile in someone else's shoes'.
means imagining what one’s own thoughts and emotions would be if one were in the situation of the other person

Why is it relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries?

If all service is a response to needs, wants or desires, then the ability to read, deduce and understand the needs can be a big differentiator for your business.

Learning to respond to these needs can be innovative and may create whole new categories(think AirBnB, All Day Dining, All Day Breakfast, plunge pools in rooms etc).

Using perspective, both types, you can make this into practice.

Actionable Insights with Real-World Examples

eg 1 - General Manager For A Day Concept or HOD For A Day

One employee / Team Member gets to be the Hotel General Manager or HOD for a day (shadowing)

IOPT - Imagine-other perspective

For the GM/HOD - be open to what the team member feels, pays attention to, asks, spends time on, is enamoured by or in awe of.

For the Team Member who is shadowing - ask questions, watch what the GM/HOD pays attention to, try to understand the rationale behind the decisions.

ISPT - imagine-self perspective

See a real-world example of this from Hyatt

eg 2 - Let Reservation/ Sales/ Front Desk team members sleep in the hotel rooms.

They will get first-hand exposure to what a guest feels.

Make sure you give them the following:

A checklist for a proper room check. This becomes feedback for Housekeeping
A list of activities /tasks that guests usually undertake. e.g. charging phones, watching tv, using the shower, ordering food & eating it in the room, switching on / off lights, of course, sleeping in the bed.

If you do this, you will find the following:

Your team now understands why the guests are so angry when they call from the room
Your team will want you to change things in the room. If that cannot be done, they will want you to put better signage.
Your team will give much better room orientations. they will point out things that they assumed were obvious before this experience.

How To Make This Wow

Not every process needs you or your team to be ISPT (walking in someone else shoes). Most innovation, guest centricity can come from IOPT (thinking about what other's feel).

However, some solutions will only emerge if you truly immerse yourself in your guest's perspective. Wheelchair friendly facilities, allergy concerns, safety & security are among these.

March 03, 2022

Eclat Insights | We Gather Here Today'.... Why Pre-Mortem Can Make Sure Your Projects & Processes, Survive & Thrive

March 03, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

Things go wrong, all the time. Why do so many plans fail? Why are there so many service complaints, from so many customers, of so many companies? Somebody somewhere introduced a process after a lot of thought, why does it fail in implementation?

A pre-mortem is a managerial strategy in which a project team imagines that a project or organization has failed, and then works backwards to determine what potentially could have led to the failure of the project or organization.

More Detail on the topic

Research conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell, of the Wharton School; Jay Russo, of Cornell; and Nancy Pennington, of the University of Colorado, found that prospective hindsight – imagining that an event has already occurred – increases the ability to correctly identify reasons for future outcomes by 30%

A typical pre-mortem begins after the team has been briefed on the plan. The leader starts the exercise by informing everyone that the project has failed spectacularly. Over the next few minutes, those in the room independently write down every reason they can think of for the failure – especially the kinds of things they ordinarily wouldn’t mention as potential problems, for fear of being impolite. - Gary Klein. 2007. Performing a Project Premortem. Harvard Business Review. September. pp. 18–19

I love the following in this concept:

1. Spectacular Failure: not just any kind of failure, but a spectacular one. That I think really brings a lot to the whole exercise.

2. It is dead. Not somehow living a little, doing just about ok, dead dead.

3. Reasons, especially ones we wouldn't mention for fear of being impolite. A lot of team members just don't want to tell the boss that the plan is not going to work.

Here are some examples of things we ran into when we ran this with our client teams.

For a very high profile wedding

The client resort did a lot of weddings, but this one was an extremely high profile one. Nothing could go wrong.

Everything was ok, till we did a pre-mortem. A maintenance team member pointed out that the stand-alone banquet Genset was acting up. Nothing was wrong, but considering this was such a big event, he thought there should be a backup. No one had ever thought of a backup for the Genset.

Once that was agreed upon (a long power cable to the hotel Genset was arranged, took 8 hours to set up), someone in the team mentioned using UPS and Self Charging lights at strategic locations in the hall to ensure immediate lighting if there was a power failure. (There was a 5 second lag to the Genset kicking in).

Post the event, which went off without a power failure, this became standard practice and the strategic lighting (made to look good too), was demonstrated and used during sales pitches and guests visits. The pre-mortem had created a new selling point.

Italian Groups / Travel

Another client had bagged a contract for an Italian tourist series. Plans were made to create new foods, drinks, activities and spruce up the property. Senior leadership was very happy. The pre-morterm was almost dismissed, till a Guest Relations mentioned that they did not have a single team member who spoke Italian. A local guide who spoke fluent Italian has hired for the coordination and the entire series went well.

How To Pre-Mortem

Step 1 - Choose the participants

Anyone who has a stake in the process/project should be a part of the activity. Do not restrict this only to managers or leaders etc. The reasons for failure generally come from the ones who know what the problems on the ground could be.

Step 2 - Detail The Plan

This is very important. When you get the team together, first discuss the plan, lay it all out and only then start the pre-mortem. All the details should be fresh in the minds of the participants.

Step 3 - Imagine The Failure / Death Of The Outcome

The exercise leader should say the words 'The project XYZ was a spectacular failure. We are gathered here today to discuss the possible reasons'

Step 4 - Generate Reasons For The Failure

You can do this in a group mode, with anyone saying out what they think and capturing it all on a whiteboard or you can ask the participants to take 10 minutes and make a personal list first, and then share.

Step 5 - Discuss / Consolidate The Lists

Make sure that everyone is allowed to share their reasons. Encourage people who do not normally share or talk a lot. You can also have everyone drop their lists into a box, thereby allowing them to share anonymously.

Step 6 - Revisit The Plan, Incorporate

Now that you have the reasons for the failure, revisit the plan and see if you can address the concern. Can you tweak something in the process? Can you add a step, remove a step? Do you need additional knowledge, resources or people?

Want to make this WOW?

Assess Likelihood, Impact, and Ease Of Prevention for each of the reasons on the list.

Hotel cars that guests request can break down. It is machinery, but let's filter that from the perspective of Likelihood, Impact, and Ease Of Prevention.

Let's do this for a major city hotel, where a guest requests an airport pick up.

Likelihood: of a car breakdown could be low, especially if the cars are serviced regularly, and a major city may have better roads etc.
Ease of Prevention: is high, ensure service and regular maintenance. One could also outsource the whole car service operation.
Impact: can be low. Considering this is a major city airport, you should be able to easily get another car available or use another provider. The guest can also wait at the airport in case it takes some time to arrange alternatives.

But if you do this from the perspective of a resort that sends out a car or jeep into the woods or to a hilltop for a picnic, then the exercise has a different outcome.

Likelihood of a car breakdown could be high because of the terrain.
Ease of Prevention: could be low. lack of good service options, terrain, or just not enough regular use.
Impact: can be High. Being stranded, not being able to get another ride in time, tough surroundings etc. Lack of food or water. This single experience could ruin the entire vacation.

The resort would be advised to work on these parameters.

Something you should do right now:

Go a little deeper into the real small issues that you would normally not think of. We once had a situation where an angry guest was asked to sign a bill after having been offered a ton of apology and massive discounts and then the pen did not work. The guest just lost it at that.

p.s. If you are interested in knowing what the resort did to mitigate the risks, write to me at p.bedi@eclathospitality.com

February 24, 2022

Eclat insights | Hire With Care; Assess For Care; Embed Care

February 24, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

Care as a term or measure of service is most commonly used in healthcare or medicine. I believe it can be a pivotal service differentiator.

Here are 3 Actionable Insights for the service leader that cares:

1. Hire With Care

If you only want to implement one thing from this insight start with this. Hire with care includes making hiring decisions with a lot of care, and adding a ton of care to your entire candidate experience. From your careers website to the communication, to the real world interview, everything should exude care for the candidate.

2. Assess For Care

Does your selection process check for a care parameter? A good selection process checks for KSA - Knowledge, Skills & Attitude. Now some might point to that and say doesn't attitude assessment include care? If it does for your organisation, kudos, but what I generally see is 'pleasant personality' checks. While a smiling, warm persona is a very good thing to have, it does not mean the person is high on care score.

Care checks could include, checking for listening skills, the ability to make someone feel welcome, being interested in the other person's story, being positive, showing concern, creating solutions, explaining things clearly.

3. Embed Care

This is super powerful. Embed every process with care. Ensure that there is a core CARE element for both your team and your guests.

Real-World Examples

For Hire With Care

Here is a hack that can make you a super boss:

take everything good that you do for your guests/customers and do it for your team.

Reservation confirmation is (usually) an email that is sent to the customer once the booking is confirmed. This has the guest details, dates, type of room, payment, any other services etc. Some hotels have improved this to include information about the country, city, airport, directions and even things to see & do. Imagine if you sent a similar confirmation for interviews.

The candidate gets the following in an email:

Date, time, venue of the interview
About the company, unit, city
An introduction to the interview panel. A little write up whom they will meet with or maybe LinkedIn URLs. You can also use this to see how much research the candidate does. Do they care enough to read about the people they will meet with?
Any other information that is important - dress code, parking rules, use of changing rooms etc.
How much time the entire process might take. If there are steps (like written tests, online tests etc) these could be mentioned too.

On the day of the interview, imagine the security guard at the staff entrance actually welcoming them and wishing them all the best! Letting them know where they can get ready/changed for the interview.

For Assess For Care

While most interviews check for knowledge and skills (thing tests, food trials, make-a-room or set-a-table challenges), add a formal process to assess for care.

How? Simulations. Give the candidate an elaborate scenario or situation. This could be a fictional case or even better is to take something from your 'incident logs'. Sometimes the responses, ideas, from candidates will surprise you and make you rethink your team's response.

In these responses, look for care. If that quality comes through, you can always train them on hard skills.

For Embed Care

An example of Care For Restaurant Service Staff.

Health experts commonly recommend drinking about 2 litres of water a day. Do you make this happen for your team? Have you created a process to measure this? Help them with it, or even ensure they do?

What if you used a little whiteboard in the back area, with everyone's name and 8 glass icons that they keep filling in. What if you as a leader kept checking it and once in a while stopped someone and made sure they had a sip? What if we cared that much?

The good thing about caring is that you can keep doing more of it. For example, once you achieve the above for your team, you can do the following: for climes that are cold, you can keep warm water for your team in the service area.

Hey! Thank you for reading till the end. Do get in touch - p.bedi@eclathospitality.com - if you would like to:

receive a sample of a CARE interview email confirmation,
add 'assess for care' to your interviews
set up amazing 'incident logs'
create more CARE for your teams

p.s. If you think this insight could be useful to someone, do care to share.

This is Insight #28. For all insights published so far, do visit www.eclathospitality.com/insights

February 17, 2022

Eclat Insights | Your No 1 Priority As A Leader: Choose The Right Metric, Make It Your Team's North Star.

February 17, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

Your No 1 Priority As A Leader: Choose The Right Metric, Make It Your Team's North Star.

Why is the North Star so special? The axis of Earth is pointed almost directly at it. During the course of the night, Polaris does not rise or set but remains in very nearly the same spot above the northern horizon year-round while the other stars circle around it. It marks the location of the sky's north pole, the point around which the whole sky turns.

Setting up your team's collective North Star should be your No 1 priority. Everybody's efforts should be in the same direction and everything should circle around it.

A North Star metric is a measure that becomes both a goal and a direction for a team or an individual.

Consider the cardinal rule for hospitality: location, location, location. This rings true for hotels, resorts, restaurants, pubs and now even in the metaverse. Getting your location right can mean a world of difference in terms of revenue and business.

Once that is done, though, the same metrics cannot be applied to different businesses. If you are a business hotel, you might want to keep an eye on repeat customer metrics, but if you are a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience resort, you may not want to worry about that metric. Same for Customer Lifetime Value or Preference Capture.

Why have a metric?

A business hotel may want to measure the time taken for Check-In, as a measure of efficiency. The quicker, the better. According to business hotel operators, guests do not want to wait, they want a ready room on arrival and want to go straight to the room.

A resort may also want to measure the time taken for Check-In but as a measure of warmth or relationship. The slower, the better. According to resort operators, guests do not want to wait, they want a ready room on arrival BUT do not want to go straight to the room. They want to take in the atmosphere, the setting, talk to a host, feel acclimatised, want attention etc.

Both may want to measure 'Time Taken for Check In' but in a totally different way.

Questions To Ask Before You Set Up A Metric

Are you measuring a process or a person?

A process metric is independent of who is being measured. e.g. A room should be made ready from a dirty status in 30 mins. That is a process metric. Whether everyone on your Housekeeping team can do it, is a person metric.

Do you want to ensure compliance or do you want to inspire performance?

Time taken to deliver a Room Service order is a common metric. Usually 5 mins for tea/coffee, 15 mins for snacks, 25 mins for meals etc. This is compliance.

Making sure the associate spends 5 mins in the room, setting up the table, serving the guest and ensuring they have everything they need. This is to inspire service.

Can you measure it easily? Fairly? Will the measure remain the same irrespective of who measures it? No biases.

Warmth / Customer Centricity and other metrics can be confusing to your team because these are difficult to measure and depend upon the observer. Your team will only commit to measures that seem fair.

A good example is 'errors in a ready room' or 'errors in a ready banquet set up'. This is something that can be self-monitored or done in pairs and is free of bias. Either something is as per standard/request or not. In the room case, a good checklist becomes the basis and in the case of a banquet, a Function Prospectus.

Soft Measure or Hard Measure?

You would need to decide whether you want only hard, quantifiable measures or also soft, feeling measures.

Quantity and Quality of food prepared is a good example. You want your kitchen team to ensure that the time taken to prepare a dish is measured, the presentation is as per standards set AND it tastes good.

Can the person improve because of the measure? Does the measure give out any intelligent feedback?

This is where a lot of the metrics fail. If the measure does not help you or your team do a better job and work on the things that matter, then is it even something you should measure?

For example, let's take the most used metric for service organisations - NPS - Net Promoter Score. What is a valet, a room service order taker, a maintenance engineer, a commis supposed to do when the NPS falls for a quarter? or goes up for that matter?

Are the stars aligned?

You cant have people pulling the boat in different directions. This is where the leader in you needs to take charge. Align everyone's north star, to the big one you are working towards.

What Is A Good Metric then?

A good metric, a good north star, matters to the person, to the process, to the department, to the division, to the company, the stakeholders and the community.
is personalised. It should be something that is a judgement/result of a large part of your team's work.
is actionable. It should be something your team member can do something about. A good metric should be something she can act upon, and something that creates action/momentum in her.
has some benchmarking, some logic in it.
has the potential to have an exponential impact on work performance.

Real-World Examples

A lot of hotels have Guest Relations Executives (s) or departments. I am amazed they are not measured on time spent with guests. This should be the no 1 metric, their North Star.
Food & Beverage service staff should track a metric I like to call 'suggestion hits'. How many guests ordered the dish/drink/wine suggested by the wait staff? I do not mean how many ordered the highest priced dish, but rather, how many guests trusted the team and went with the suggestions offered by them.

Want to make this Insight WOW?

This section is my north star! :)

Have fun with this idea. Once you understand that you can drive performance and initiatives via a good metric, then develop as many as you need as a leader. You can run them weekly, monthly, quarterly etc. You can have competitions amongst your team members or teams.
You can let your team tell you what they should be use as a metric. Try it, you will be amazed at the ideas you receive.
Reward, Reward, Reward. Consistently, without fail, reward the team when they meet the metrics and when they show the courage to follow their North Star.
Use the North Star as a decision-making tool. In the example about Guest Relations, if you do decide that Time Spent With Guests is what you want them to aim at, then you will have to work with them to either reduce, manage or remove all other tasks that take them away from that metric. You may need to train them in the art of conversation, dining etiquette, etc. All these decisions become easy once you know your North Star.
Make sure your North Star aligns with your team's. Too many managers are busy getting the team to work on stuff that contributes to their performance and bonuses. Work with your team on what will bring them rewards. Make their success your North Star.

As always, thank you for reading. I am happy to help you set up your personal North Star or your team's. Write to me at p.bedi@eclathospitality.com and let's create that shiny thing in the sky, together.

February 10, 2022

Eclat Insights | Everything Is Created Twice. A Step-By-Step Approach To Envisioning Amazing Services WIth Your Team

February 10, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

According to Dr Stephen Covey, everything is created twice. There is a mental (first) creation and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint.

The act of creating the mental creation is called visualization.

Visualization is the process of creating a visual image in one's mind or mentally rehearsing a planned movement in order to learn skills or enhance performance.

This is generally considered an individual activity. I am asking you to make it a collective one. Get your team together, and then follow this process.

Step 1 - Collective Visualization

Get the team to sit in a circle.
Move around the circle in a clockwise fashion.
Tell your team that they will be collectively imagining a perfect scenario. A happy outcome for the guest, the team and the company. Tell them everything in this will be bright and shiny. The only rules are: Do not negate anything your team member imagines & Always take it further by saying 'yes, and...'. (this is an improv tool)
Tell them to make it real with smells, sounds, and the like. As much or as little detail as they need to make it feel real.
Take any process that the team is involved in or responsible for.
Ask everyone to close their eyes, listen & imagine.
Starting with any one member, ask them to describe the mental picture they see. They can share how much they want and then say 'continue' when they want their team member to take it forward.
At 'continue' the next person in the circle should take the story forward.

Step 2 - Capturing The Visualization

You may want to have a few practice rounds first, but sooner than later, you should capture this amazing process. Your team will start creating a superlative memory, a story, that can or has the potential to become your ideal or perfect customer service experience.

The first thing would be to record the narration on audio. Capture the energy, the intonation, the highs and lows, the pitch and the texture of the voices.

When the process is done, play the audio to the team. They might laugh, cringe, or even be embarrassed, but you will see that they are listening and feeling it even more intently. Ask them if they want to do another round or are good for now.

Step 3 - Revisiting The Visualization

Post the activity in Step 2, let the result simmer in everyone's mind for a week or so. Then, gather them around again, and this time, just tell them 'you know what to do'.

Repeat step 2, record the audio.

Now play the old audio and the new one. You will see so much more detail emerge. Some team members will have added elements you did not think of or imagine could be part of the process.

Ask the team if they want to create a video using the audio as a script. Get the team to act in various roles. Keep improving as you go along.

Step 4 - Reimagining / Improving The Visualization

The last step is to keep improving. There are two ways to do this:

You can ask the team to work on the same process and keep adding more details, depth.
You can ask the team to start creating versions of the process for different situations or customer segments.

Want to make this WOW?

Let every team member lead at least one visualization. Break down the process to as small a sequence of steps as you need to in case you have a large team, but let everyone be activated by this activity.
You can also ask team members to visualise a particular detail that is unique or different from everyone else's. When this manifests in the real world, it is a light bulb moment. For example, one team member that I ran this with, imagined a whole family wearing identical clothing at the time of check-in. She couldn't stop smiling when it really happened a few weeks later.

Do this for me right now. Close your eyes and imaging yourself doing this at your workplace. Imagine getting everyone together, sharing what you want them to do and leading the session. Imagine each and every one of them enjoying the exercise.

As always, please allow me to lead a team visualization session for your team. This is with my compliments. I am on p.bedi@eclathospitality.com

***Prabhjot Bedi***

The one thing you can do right now is going on a walk. I would love to either go on a virtual walk with you or see your recorded walk to discuss tons of improvement ideas. As always, write to me at **p.bedi@eclathospitality.com**

January 27, 2022

Eclat Insights | “Satisficing" - How To Maximise This Amazing Human Trait

January 27, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

Satisficing is a portmanteau word, made from satisfying & sufficing. It was first used by the Nobel laureate in economics Herbert Simon to explain a decision-making process in which an individual makes a choice that is satisfactory rather than optimal.

Why do we humans do this in the first place? Why accept something that is just satisfying, rather than go after something perfect, or optimal? Because, it would require a great deal of effort – and may not even be possible – to gather all the necessary information in order to make the best decision, and satisficing thus represents the kinds of decisions we are actually capable of making. Satisficing is all about making ‘good enough’ decisions instead of perfect ones.

Psychologists have found that people's approaches to decision-making tend to fit into one of two categories:

1. Maximizers, Tend to use a more exhaustive approach to their decision-making process: they seek and evaluate more options than satisficers do to achieve greater satisfaction. Maximizers tend to be less happy with their decision outcomes.

2. Satisficers, whose choices are determined by more modest criteria and nothing more. They generally stop looking when they have found something that fulfils their criteria. Satisficers tend to be relatively pleased with their decisions.

So as customer service leaders, who can we use this?

The starting point would be to see if you can identify yourself as a maximiser or satisficer. You will find a self-evaluation guide at the bottom of this post.

Now, can you do this for your Guests / Customers? Some examples:

A guest spends a lot of time looking at the menu, asking the server what is best here, can you call the chef? what are those people having, etc, etc? Probably a Maximiser.
A guest likes the first room you show her. She does not want to see a different view or a different style etc. Satisficer.

For the same process, develop 2 faces or shades.

Check-In

For Satisficer - 'Ms XYZ, your agent requested for a twin room, close to the elevator and on a non-smoking room. Your room is this way.

For Maximiser - 'Ms XYZ, this is your first visit to our hotel. May I show you a couple of rooms? One is a twin room, the other has a king-size bed. We also have sea view facing rooms and ones that are closer to the elevators'.

Laundry Bag & Laundry Slips

This one is a little out there but stay with me. This could be a fun experiment to run too.

Instead of a long laundry list, that lists out all the types of garments that a guest could possibly have, try a simplified one with just the number of items. That's it. Give the guest both these options and see what happens.

Menus

For Maximisers - More choices, more details, nuances, maybe even pics and a QR code so they can see how it is cooked and what are the ingredients etc.

For Satisficers - Ask for top preferences and then offer a smaller, curated menu. A menu 'a la you'

Once you identify what a guest's mode is when interacting with your services, present the correct face of your process.

Caution - people can move between these modes for different decisions. You may be a satisficer for renting a car, but a maximiser when buying one.

Want to make this WOW?

The distinction between satisficing and maximizing not only differs in the decision-making process but also in the post-decision evaluation

For Maximizers? Make sure these guests get more information, more choices, more time to make those choices and are allowed to change their minds if they want to.

Let them know that they can change the room if they don't feel it was the right choice.
Let them know you will be happy to bring them another dish if you see they are not really happy with what they ordered.

You can also do this for your teams.

Let the maximisers in your team make the duty rota after they have asked the satisficers which shifts they would want.

Let the satisficers work on the physical or hard part of your services. example, the table layout, setting up a room for a guest etc. Let the maximisers work on the soft part of the services, empathy, warmth etc.

Want to know what type are you?

January 20, 2022

Eclat Insights | Anticipation - The Magic Ingredient Of Great Customer Service

January 20, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

Let me recount a recent experience. My mother called our neighbourhood chemist, who has been looking after us for over 2 decades now, to order a hot water bottle/bag for her neck pain. He sent the bottle as ordered, but he also sent a balm. He called her to ask her to try it. 'it will help' he said.

It did help. It also made an extra sale for him, but that is secondary.

Why is this amazing? He anticipated what the customer needed, not just what she wanted. He proactively provided it.

Three Steps Of Service according to The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company Gold Standards are:

A warm and sincere greeting.
Use the guest's name. Anticipation and fulfilment of each guest's needs.
Fond farewell. Give a warm goodbye and use the guest's name.

Anticipation is the key.

Why is this relevant to Hospitality & Service Industries?

Anticipation is the key ingredient to creating a remarkable customer experience. When a customer is met with the surprise and delight of having their unexpressed needs fulfilled, it creates a compelling emotional connection and keeps them coming back for more. - Ryan Estis

Actionable Insights

Guest Point Of View. Look at everything, from GPOV

You know your hotel lobby. You work there, you see it every day, you know where everything is, but that is not true for your guests. Is there enough signage?

A guest once asked me 'why don't you have little lights as they have in aeroplanes, that tell you if the loo is vacant?'. In restaurants or spaces that have only one facility, this makes sense. It makes sure the guest does not need to keep checking and rattling the doorknob, which makes it very disturbing for the guest inside too.

Be Proactive

Anticipation is a stay ahead of the curve game. If you change something or introduce something because of a customer complaint, that is not anticipation. It's when you create a solution that the customer just loves and thinks 'that's nice!' or 'that's thoughtful', then it is anticipation.

A restaurant kept some prescription reading glasses in a nice little box for guests who may not be carrying their own reading glasses with them. A very thoughtful touch to let your guests read the fine print on menus or bills.

Take Bets

Start small experiments. We mentioned it before, and it is worth mentioning again.

Here is one you can start today - If a guest visits the gym in the morning, prior to breakfast, be proactive, anticipate that she may want a healthy breakfast option and present it to her when she orders via In-Room Dining or visits your Coffee Shop.

It is a small bet you are making. One that says, this guest seems someone who might want a healthy option. It may not be true. If the guest is anything like me, probably a bigger breakfast is in order because of the morning workout. Either way, you will find out something about your guest and they will appreciate the thoughtfulness shown.

Listen & Then Go Be Responsive

VOC - Voice Of The Customer is a powerful concept. I always tell my clients, if you collect any information or feedback, it automatically creates an expectation in the mind of the customer. Answer this, how many times did a business ask you for your birthday and not wish you? That is a gap.

More importantly, listen for the unsaid. Respond to the obvious, but also, think about the not-so-obvious. Search for absurd or funny reviews and I am sure you will find a lot of them. I did. Here is one. I really think highlights all the points I am trying to make:

If you were the museum director, you throw this into the 'they don't know what they are talking about' pile or, look at this as the future coming to you faster than you think and create engaging content around your displays.

Look To Add Value

This is a brilliant way to look at Anticipation. At every step of the process, for every interaction, if you can ask the question 'how can I add value here?' you will have done a super-duper job of it.

For example, Imagine you are visiting a country or city for the first time. You book a hotel car to pick you up from the airport. Wouldn't it be nice if your valet told you approx how much time it will take to get to the hotel? The pilots of all major airlines tell you that, even though you know from the booking, the ticket etc. They tell you again, in the flight, coz you may be on multiple flights in a day. It's just a nice thing to do. It adds value.

Want to make this WOW?

Make Front Desk Predict Customer Behaviour.

Ok, this is going to sound a little out there, and yet, it is something I really think you should try. As a leader, this will make work fun for your team and a little challenge never hurt anyone.

The idea is simple: After a guest checks in, ask the front desk or the guest relations team member who interacted with them to make some predictions. Will the guest eat in the hotel restaurant? Will the guest use the Spa? Is the guest going to call and ask for a room change?

Log these down. The team member who gets the maximum predictions right at the end of the month gets a reward.

This powerful exercise will 10X the ability of your team to anticipate.

Oh, I anticipate that you might need some more guidance on this. Maybe for formats, some ideas on how to get it started etc. Write to me at p.bedi@eclathospitality.com and let's get this done!

January 13, 2022

Eclat Insights | Create Customer Personas & Go Through All Your SOPs To See How To Improve The Experience For That TG.

January 13, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

One of the earlier insights was The Compound Effect In Service Design, creating customer personas and going through your processes was a how to make it a wow idea in that insight.

A lot of you got in touch and wanted to know more, detail the thought, so here is a detailed insight on the same.

What Are Customer Personas?

A persona, (also user persona, customer persona, buyer persona) is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.

A traditional and common approach is the FIT, Group, MICE segmentation followed by hotels. For a different take user types, read this.

I like to think of it in terms of Customer Roles rather than Customer Segmentation. For example, the expectations and needs of someone hosting an event or gathering are very different than if they were attending that event. The person remains the same, the role changes.

How To Action This Insight

First, just make a simple table with all your processes as rows and your customer personas as columns.

Then, start developing micro-processes. Micro processes are defined as small variations in a larger process that are defined for a particular need, location, time of day, situation etc.

Real-World Example

Check-In

Most hotels will already have a different check-in process for individuals and groups. Can we go deeper?

Let's look at two very accepted and robust customer persons used by most hotels - FIT-Individual & FIT-Family. Because you are a customer-sensitive organisation, you can do the following:

Wifi (if you have password-protected wifi or login/registration etc), give both the customer personas all the details (printed, in-room menu, services directory etc), but for the family, let them add multiple devices under one registration/user name & password. Every kid has their own device now and it can get a little frustrating to set that up for the entire family. This is creating solutions for a specific customer persona. Of course, if you are uber-luxury, you should have a digital concierge to do all this.

Room Setup

The entire industry has some very well defined practices for room cleaning and set-up. Most hotels will have a special set up for honeymooners or special occasions. Some will increase the bathroom amenities and towels if there is an extra bed or small family staying in a room. For the MICE segment, hotels will place the schedule of events in the room. Hotels may also add little maps, details of important contacts and more.

I share this only to highlight that our teams already know how to look after different customer personas. We just need to do more, go deeper. For example, can you think about how you could do up your room for a guest who identifies as a minimalist? What can you do for green-conscious travellers?

Want to make this WOW?

Develop different Customer Service Story Boards for different customer personas.

This is a very powerful exercise that makes it easy for your teams to visualise the entire process with a very specific 'hero' of the process and a very well defined outcome.

January 06, 2022

Eclat Insights | How Did You Make People Feel Today?

January 06, 2022/ Ritika Dsouza

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. — Maya Angelou

I have always had a journal, I have moved between formats and philosophies of journaling, but logging down things came naturally. It was the same at the Duty Manager's desk. A logbook was central to our functioning. This is not a post about journaling either.

In the journal, I started forming some questions that I would like to answer regularly. This becomes both a process and a checklist. One of those questions is what this post is about - How did you make people feel today?

This is a powerful question to ask yourself.

The question should make you go over your interactions in the day. Watch the interactions, play them at a slower speed in your mind, watch the other person in those interactions. If they could tell you exactly how you made them feel, what would they say?

How does this apply to hospitality or customer service?

Here is a standard customer service interaction these days.

You complain about something to someone at some company. They either refund your amount, apologise or say there is nothing they can do about your complaint. Then you either curse them or feel justice was done. Sometimes, even after a refund, you are angry. How did that interaction make you feel?

Now, switch. Become the service provider that you are. How does your team, your processes, make your customers feel?

Imagine using this in the following situations:

At an Indian restaurant, the guest is not served another roti/paratha/naan because she did not order it. The order is only placed when she asks for it and now she has to wait for hot bread. 'How Does a Guest/Customer Feel Right Now?'
The valet brings back the car from the parking lot. As the guest is about to sit in the car, he notices an old candy wrapper on the mat. Obviously, the valet saw it too but did nothing about it. 'How Does a Guest/Customer Feel Right Now?'
The guest booked the family suite, reconfirmed it before boarding the flight, was picked up in a hotel car, has two small children who are tired and cranky. The suite is not ready on arrival, but the front desk offers the couple complimentary drinks while they wait, holding the tired children in their arms. 'How Does a Guest/Customer Feel Right Now?'

You can do this for every interaction, every process.

Want To Make This Wow?

Do you have a shift briefing? If you don't, let's talk. You are missing out on approx 1000 awesome opportunities a year to get your team to communicate. Have a staff/team notice board? Have a WhatsApp group for the team?

If yes, to any of the above, make sure you have someone share 'How Did I Make People Feel Today?' on it, every day.

Make sure everyone does it. You can set up a schedule or you can make sure every team member shares this at least once a week.

Oh, as the manager/leader, don't forget to thank them for sharing and reward the ones who really went that extra mile. Remember to ask yourself 'How did you make your team feel today?

December 30, 2021

Eclat Insights | The 'ShowRoom Of The Day' Concept & Other Amazing '1 Thing' Ideas To SuperCharge Your Processes

December 30, 2021/ Ritika Dsouza

I think the book 'The One Thing' by Gary W. Keller & Jay Papasan is a wonderful life philosophy to live by. The core is simple, focus on one thing.

Some other insights become available once this one seeps in:

Once you know the 1 thing that is most important, do it repeatedly, with excellence & deliberate practice.
Once you have reached the high point in that 1 thing, 10X it. Do it more, do it faster, do it cheaper, do it with lesser constraints or find new ways to do it or just do it a lot.
Once the 10X is achieved, add to it. This is something like habit stacking. Once the 1 thing becomes second nature, add another 1 thing to the stack.
Repeat the entire process. Success is built sequentially.

Why is it relevant to the Hospitality & Service Industries?

There is so much that can go wrong that a large part of the industry tends to try and do everything from the notion of 'no complaints'. As long as no complaints are coming, everyone seems to think they are doing a great job. While this may be true in non-delight sectors, delight requires more.

Strengthening everything takes time though. If you can isolate a task, a process, that creates a large difference in delight, then you can bring about the change faster. Once that change occurs, it stays for life to be used across more and more processes or tasks. Once you start to see what matters, you are changed for life.

Actionable Insights

The ShowRoom Process

Let's start with something small, yet powerful. Every day, across hotels, someone is showing a room to a prospective buyer/client/guest. Usually, this is the Sales or Front Office.

In most cases, the room that is clean and available (i.e. not blocked for an arrival) is shown. The logic is, all rooms should be in a good enough condition to show to guests.

We think, there is a better way. This is the process we prescribe

**Process Name | Showroom Process**

Reason for Process: To ensure the hotel is showcased to all prospective guests/customers to the highest standards. To ensure no arriving guests get a room that has been shown to a prospective customer but not refreshed.

**Process Detail**

Every day 1 room in each category (based on availability) will be termed a showroom. The showroom will be ready by 0900 hrs in all aspects. The showrooms will be made OS (out-of-service) on the system.
The showroom will be prepared to the highest standards with all amenities & goodies.
The Showroom keys are to be made (in case of automated ones) and kept ready at the front desk.
The Service Manager will check all the showrooms.
All Walk-In guests or guests that come to visit or inspect the property will be shown the showrooms.
The Sales / Ops team showing the room will make a note of anything that could be improved or is not as per standards. This will be relayed to Housekeeping.
HouseKeeping will refresh the room after each show visit.
The showrooms will be taken back into the inventory at 1800 hrs or if occupancy demands it.
A report will be generated for the number of showings in a day, details of the visit and follow up required.
This can be done for each room category in the hotel.

Once the hotel has mastered the ShowRoom concept, it is time for 10X. All rooms should be then made to ShowRoom standard and Sales should be allowed to take any room for viewing.

You can also 10X this by adding recognition or awards for the teams that create zero-error ShowRooms.

You can do this for other departments & processes too. For example, use the same template to do a ShowRoom Table in your restaurant. Make sure one table every day, is perfect in every regard. Once that is achieved, 10X it. IRD, Kitchen, Laundry, Car Service, you name it, you can do this.

Want to make this WOW?

You can use the same concept of 1 thing, for skill or even things like grooming. Get your team members, to focus on 1 key skill, something that can make everything else better and get them to improve on just that skill.

For example, if email management is the skill that will make everything in Reservations or Sales better (more time, peace of mind, no missing details etc), then focus only on that 1 thing.

In Banquet Operations, for example, if you can make your Function Sheet better and better, you will find it makes everyone's life easier.

Reward progress. Reward someone 10Xing it. Acknowledge that this will take time but the effort is worth it.

Something you can do right now is to make a list of 3 things / 3 skills that if you improve, you will improve everything or make everything else at work easier. Then choose the No 1 in that and go after it with a vengeance.

Send me that 1 thing and let me coach you in first getting it to world-class levels and then 10Xing it. I am p.bedi@eclathospitality.com

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Eclat Insights | Everything Is Created Twice. A Step-By-Step Approach To Envisioning Amazing Services WIth Your Team

Eclat Insights | “Satisficing" - How To Maximise This Amazing Human Trait

Eclat Insights | Anticipation - The Magic Ingredient Of Great Customer Service

Eclat Insights | Create Customer Personas & Go Through All Your SOPs To See How To Improve The Experience For That TG.

Eclat Insights | How Did You Make People Feel Today?

Eclat Insights | The 'ShowRoom Of The Day' Concept & Other Amazing '1 Thing' Ideas To SuperCharge Your Processes

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