Developing A Service Culture Program with Remarkable Results

Objectives

A major hospitality organization headquartered in Hawaii was looking for a service training program to be used across its portfolio of 4 brands and 58 hotels and resorts. The key objective was to improve their service scores and more importantly create a unique culture of service which would allow their front-line team members to connect with their guests, build loyalty, and better resolve guest problems.

Strategy

Here and Now Consulting was hired to develop a tailored Service Culture program for this Hospitality Organization. We began by interviewing over 120 individuals across the entire company, to include: President, Executives and Corporate Team Members, General Managers, Supervisors and the frontline Team Members who are serving the guests. Then using our own RSD System (Research, Storyboard, Design), we designed a two-phased program which was rolled out to all property and corporate team members across the entire organization. A roll-out of this magnitude needed a team of internal trainers, which we created and facilitated a Train-the-Trainer Certification for over 140 Trainers. These Trainers trained the program and became the brand evangelists, making sure the learnings were then sustained using a reinforcement package of exercises which we also designed and launched. Five years later, the program is going as strong as ever.

Results

The organization required every team member to attend the training and within 4 months had reached over 85% completion rates across their 58 hotels including the corporate office. The customer driven results were remarkable. 27 of the hotels and resorts saw an increase in their guest survey questionnaires around service, problem resolution, and recommending others to the hotel. 16 hotels went up in their TripAdvisor rankings and 6 of them were placed on the top 10 TripAdvisor recommended hotels for their area. Team member survey results were equally remarkable and employee morale improved. In their annual employee survey, the question of “I am given the proper training to do my job” had an increase from 48% agreement to 87% year over year after the training was launched.