27 July 2011
By Patrick O’Bryan
HotelNewsNow.com columnist
How well do your hotels’ training processes coincide with the way you measure the success of your employees? Do your employees understand what is expected of them before you measure the quality of the service they’re providing?
Things like data measurement platforms and mystery shopping initiatives can be incredibly informative—even critical to a hotel’s success—but they can also be expensive and time-consuming to implement, particularly when they are implemented before an organization takes a good look at its culture and training processes, and, based on both, determines what, exactly, should be measured. To get the most out of any money you put into performance measurement technology or mystery shopping programs, consider how well your hotel’s current mission, vision and values are working for you, and make sure you have successfully relayed your performance standards to your staff.
If you already have a well-defined company culture and are confident in your training program, deciding what to measure when it comes to service should be fairly easy. If your company culture isn’t clearly defined or your training program doesn’t adequately inform your employees about your behavioral expectations and the tasks for which they will be responsible once they actually get out on the floor, you will need to do some internal analyses before making any attempts to analyze how your staff is measuring up.
One way to determine whether your culture and training processes are truly in alignment with your overall business objectives is to partner with a third-party hospitality training and measurement firm capable of helping you create a baseline to benchmark future staff performance. A qualified third party can help you gain an unbiased view of your culture, set new goals for the future, and better align your culture with your brand. They should also be able to help you to determine exactly how your staff can help you meet your goals and promote your brand effectively. Once your organization’s real wants and needs are uncovered, an initial round of mystery shops will help you create your baseline by measuring staff performance prior to your having made any changes to your training processes.
Shop standards
The initial mystery shop standards you use to create your baseline should be the same standards you use during later mystery shops once changes to your training processes have taken place. The standards your mystery shoppers measure may look a little or a lot like the following:
1. Guests are acknowledged with a smile and eye contact as they approach within 10 feet or when next in line if a line is present. The employee acknowledges the guest non-verbally when engaged with another guest or co-worker.
2. The employee greets the guest in a professional manner when the guest is within five feet of approaching.
3. The employee uses the guest's name appropriately (when known).
4. The employee anticipates the guest’s needs and/or offers helpful suggestions.
5. The employee provides extraordinary service, e.g. by having fun, paying a compliment, or being flexible.
6. The employee ends the guest interaction on a positive note by thanking the guest and/or offering a parting pleasantry.
7. An employee who receives a guest complaint listens, apologizes, solves and follows up on the problem (when applicable).
8. The employee demonstrates sincerity and professionalism through body language and tone of voice.
9. The employee wears a clean and pressed uniform with proper credentials and is properly groomed according to set standards.
10. The employee communicates and works professionally with co-workers and other departments and presents the organization in a positive light.
Your hotel will want to create custom standards that are specifically designed to measure the unique things that are critical to its success, of course, but the 10 standards above should give you an idea of the types of things you can have mystery shopping analysts identify as either being met or unmet.
You’ll note the standards are specific. Standards Nos. 1 and 2, for example, specify how many feet away a guest should be from an employee before being acknowledged so as to leave as little room for interpretation as possible by employees and mystery shoppers alike. And all of the standards are delivered in an order that reflects the natural progression of typical guest-employee interactions.
Set a baseline
Once your standards are developed and your initial round of mystery shops have taken place, you can analyze your baseline mystery shop results to determine how your training processes will need to change in order to achieve your desired results in the future. To measure and analyze both your baseline and future results, you will need access to a data measurement platform that:
• allows for complete customization of checklists and reporting options;
• provides accurate information in real time;
• provides the data that is gathered by analysts trained according to your set standards and operational systems;
• has multiple reporting options that are flexible and user-friendly;
• is able to generate customized surveys based on your overall service objectives;
• houses standards of performance-based checklists directly linked to an overall training system;
• expresses standards in a quantifiable and object manner;
• provides checklists and standards that provide a sound basis for procedural recommendations;
• allows for focused direction and development of training programs;
• evaluates staff performance; and
• can be used internally to capture comparative data from competitors.
Develop a training program
After analyzing your baseline mystery shop results, develop a training program that will maximize your strengths and improve service quality in those areas in which your staff is not currently performing in accordance with your newly developed standards.
Most training programs focus solely on training management, but this is usually a big mistake. Service training should be extended beyond management and focus on those employees who interact the most with your guests—your front-line staff. Initial training workshops should be followed up with continuous on-the-job training that can be delivered to front-line staff via management easily and practically. Lengthy mandatory meetings are not going to be as effective as dispersing training information on the job, say, as employees are coming in at the beginning of a new shift. Rather than dump a lot of information on your employees at once, provide follow-up training information and performance feedback in 15 minutes or less, piece by piece, on a weekly or biweekly basis.
When you have a clearly defined company culture, set performance standards and a solid training program, you can focus on growing your business and expanding your brand rather than on putting out the fires that occur because these things aren’t in place. With solid training, the right tools and the ability to accurately assess your efforts and implement changes accordingly, you can empower every member of your organization to meet and exceed expectations.
Patrick O'Bryan is chief operating officer at FreemanGroup (http://www.freemangroupsolutions.com/), a customer service solutions provider that serves premier hospitality and tourism organizations around the world. Clients range from government and tourist boards to hotels, casinos, cruise ships, and airlines. In addition to offering a number of proprietary training workshops and follow-up training programs, FreemanGroup offers instructor certification programs and workshops specifically designed for human resource departments, leadership, and supervisors.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of HotelNewsNow.com or its parent company, Smith Travel Research and its affiliated companies. Columnists published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.
Source : http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/6073/How-to-successfully-analyze-hotel-service (Thank You)
By Patrick O’Bryan
HotelNewsNow.com columnist
How well do your hotels’ training processes coincide with the way you measure the success of your employees? Do your employees understand what is expected of them before you measure the quality of the service they’re providing?
Things like data measurement platforms and mystery shopping initiatives can be incredibly informative—even critical to a hotel’s success—but they can also be expensive and time-consuming to implement, particularly when they are implemented before an organization takes a good look at its culture and training processes, and, based on both, determines what, exactly, should be measured. To get the most out of any money you put into performance measurement technology or mystery shopping programs, consider how well your hotel’s current mission, vision and values are working for you, and make sure you have successfully relayed your performance standards to your staff.
If you already have a well-defined company culture and are confident in your training program, deciding what to measure when it comes to service should be fairly easy. If your company culture isn’t clearly defined or your training program doesn’t adequately inform your employees about your behavioral expectations and the tasks for which they will be responsible once they actually get out on the floor, you will need to do some internal analyses before making any attempts to analyze how your staff is measuring up.One way to determine whether your culture and training processes are truly in alignment with your overall business objectives is to partner with a third-party hospitality training and measurement firm capable of helping you create a baseline to benchmark future staff performance. A qualified third party can help you gain an unbiased view of your culture, set new goals for the future, and better align your culture with your brand. They should also be able to help you to determine exactly how your staff can help you meet your goals and promote your brand effectively. Once your organization’s real wants and needs are uncovered, an initial round of mystery shops will help you create your baseline by measuring staff performance prior to your having made any changes to your training processes.
Shop standards
The initial mystery shop standards you use to create your baseline should be the same standards you use during later mystery shops once changes to your training processes have taken place. The standards your mystery shoppers measure may look a little or a lot like the following:
1. Guests are acknowledged with a smile and eye contact as they approach within 10 feet or when next in line if a line is present. The employee acknowledges the guest non-verbally when engaged with another guest or co-worker.
2. The employee greets the guest in a professional manner when the guest is within five feet of approaching.
3. The employee uses the guest's name appropriately (when known).
4. The employee anticipates the guest’s needs and/or offers helpful suggestions.
5. The employee provides extraordinary service, e.g. by having fun, paying a compliment, or being flexible.
6. The employee ends the guest interaction on a positive note by thanking the guest and/or offering a parting pleasantry.
7. An employee who receives a guest complaint listens, apologizes, solves and follows up on the problem (when applicable).
8. The employee demonstrates sincerity and professionalism through body language and tone of voice.
9. The employee wears a clean and pressed uniform with proper credentials and is properly groomed according to set standards.
10. The employee communicates and works professionally with co-workers and other departments and presents the organization in a positive light.
Your hotel will want to create custom standards that are specifically designed to measure the unique things that are critical to its success, of course, but the 10 standards above should give you an idea of the types of things you can have mystery shopping analysts identify as either being met or unmet.
You’ll note the standards are specific. Standards Nos. 1 and 2, for example, specify how many feet away a guest should be from an employee before being acknowledged so as to leave as little room for interpretation as possible by employees and mystery shoppers alike. And all of the standards are delivered in an order that reflects the natural progression of typical guest-employee interactions.
Set a baseline
Once your standards are developed and your initial round of mystery shops have taken place, you can analyze your baseline mystery shop results to determine how your training processes will need to change in order to achieve your desired results in the future. To measure and analyze both your baseline and future results, you will need access to a data measurement platform that:
• allows for complete customization of checklists and reporting options;
• provides accurate information in real time;
• provides the data that is gathered by analysts trained according to your set standards and operational systems;
• has multiple reporting options that are flexible and user-friendly;
• is able to generate customized surveys based on your overall service objectives;
• houses standards of performance-based checklists directly linked to an overall training system;
• expresses standards in a quantifiable and object manner;
• provides checklists and standards that provide a sound basis for procedural recommendations;
• allows for focused direction and development of training programs;
• evaluates staff performance; and
• can be used internally to capture comparative data from competitors.
Develop a training program
After analyzing your baseline mystery shop results, develop a training program that will maximize your strengths and improve service quality in those areas in which your staff is not currently performing in accordance with your newly developed standards.
Most training programs focus solely on training management, but this is usually a big mistake. Service training should be extended beyond management and focus on those employees who interact the most with your guests—your front-line staff. Initial training workshops should be followed up with continuous on-the-job training that can be delivered to front-line staff via management easily and practically. Lengthy mandatory meetings are not going to be as effective as dispersing training information on the job, say, as employees are coming in at the beginning of a new shift. Rather than dump a lot of information on your employees at once, provide follow-up training information and performance feedback in 15 minutes or less, piece by piece, on a weekly or biweekly basis.
When you have a clearly defined company culture, set performance standards and a solid training program, you can focus on growing your business and expanding your brand rather than on putting out the fires that occur because these things aren’t in place. With solid training, the right tools and the ability to accurately assess your efforts and implement changes accordingly, you can empower every member of your organization to meet and exceed expectations.
Patrick O'Bryan is chief operating officer at FreemanGroup (http://www.freemangroupsolutions.com/), a customer service solutions provider that serves premier hospitality and tourism organizations around the world. Clients range from government and tourist boards to hotels, casinos, cruise ships, and airlines. In addition to offering a number of proprietary training workshops and follow-up training programs, FreemanGroup offers instructor certification programs and workshops specifically designed for human resource departments, leadership, and supervisors.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of HotelNewsNow.com or its parent company, Smith Travel Research and its affiliated companies. Columnists published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.
Source : http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/6073/How-to-successfully-analyze-hotel-service (Thank You)
