Customer Journey Series, Ch. 2: How Empowered Hotel Teams Improve Guest Experience

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. It’s your hospitality. Friend. Glenn, I want to thank you for watching this special series on the customer journey with our friends over at Coral Tree. But first, I got to thank our friends over at Unifocus. Unifocus, Technology that drives value. Check them out at Unifocus dot com. They make things like this possible. Mr. Sean Beucler, SVP operations over CoralTree, it’s great to see you. I want to talk a little bit about this strategy on customer journey and why now you’re doubling down on that strategy.

Sean: [00:00:28] It’s a it’s a great question, Glenn. You know, we’ve been on this journey now for a few years. And I would say really coming out of Covid is where we really kicked off our focus on guest service. I think during Covid, a lot of the guest experience was more tactical and less around engagement.

Glenn: [00:00:47] And and to be fair, it was a complicated time and customers were able to bought into that because they were just happy to not be.

Sean: [00:00:53] Absolutely. They were happy to get out. And now I think guests are really looking for that genuine connection, right? They’re looking for engagement, communication and so forth. So we’ve dove down into this guest journey piece. We we coined Routes of service and routes of service is really the process behind the people, right? But I would tell you today, our major focus is on the people. It’s on the team.

Glenn: [00:01:15] Okay. So I hear that a lot, but what does that really mean in terms of creating that strategy that’s going to help drive revenues and bring coral to the future?

Sean: [00:01:24] 100% empowerment. We trust our team to really go above and beyond. We trust our team to make decisions. And quite frankly, we trust our team to make mistakes often, right? You have to. Sometimes those mistakes are great lessons, but we got to learn from those mistakes. And what I would say is today, our focus on our people delivering those great guest experiences is what ultimately drives our guests to come back. Our guests coming back is what drives our occupancy, our ADR, etc. and people buy today based on online reputation. So what the guest says about you is even more important now than it used to be.

Glenn: [00:01:59] And you really need to connect those dots with all the associates to get them to really buy into the program.

Sean: [00:02:05] Absolutely. It’s got to be a commitment from top down. And it starts with our president, Tom Larsen, and then a person like myself and my role supporting our general managers, our leadership team to really buy in. It definitely starts with the line level team. Yeah, right. It’s not the leadership that delivers our guest experience. If we really think about it, it’s our housekeeping team. It’s our engineers, it’s our bartenders. How do those teams, how are those teams inspired and through inspiration?

Glenn: [00:02:26] Okay, so this is this is the I always find the real tricky part. And I know you’re going to have a good answer for me on this one. Everyone talks a good game about empowering their team to actually do stuff right. But how do you get the team to actually believe it and actually go ahead and do it, and not fear making a mistake where they could feel feel like they’re going to lose their gig?

Sean: [00:02:45] Yeah, I do have a good answer for that.

Glenn: [00:02:46] Yeah, good.

Sean: [00:02:48] It’s true recognition. I mean, quite frankly, when mistakes happen, I think they need to be talked about. They need to be embraced. Right. And then celebrated. And quite frankly, I think you want to recognize what you want repeated. So I, you know, we’re here at Black Desert today. Black desert has a wonderful recognition program. They have these beautiful cards that they hand out on the spot to the team members when they see them doing something exceptional. Right? Right. You recognize what you want repeated, right?

Glenn: [00:03:12] But then if they make a mistake, though, how do you how do you make sure that they feel like it’s okay and that level of trust is maintained?

Sean: [00:03:20] Sure, absolutely. I think I think it’s again, through that communication, you don’t forget about it. You don’t look away, you go in feet first and you talk about it. And I think often what I found with our line level team members especially, they appreciate that they want people want to do great in their jobs. They want to be set up for success. And that’s a moment in time, a moment in time where you are helping somebody talk through it and get better. And ultimately I think then they care. They know you care about them.

Glenn: [00:03:47] Yeah. And if they’re if they’re career minded folks, when you engage them in that sort of way and they know that you’ve created a safe place for them to grow and make mistakes, which is part of growing, then I think that’s really where you can keep them on the team for a long time.

Sean: [00:04:00] Absolutely, absolutely.

Glenn: [00:04:01] So what are you what are you hoping for, the results of the program?

Sean: [00:04:03] Well, ultimately retention, I think retention is a big deal. We are in the hospitality industry. We’re in a war for talent, so I11 thing is hiring unbelievable people, setting them up for great success, and seeing them grow in our in our business. There’s no doubt that drives the guest experience. As I said earlier, the guest experience is what ultimately makes our properties successful. If the guests are coming back time and time again, they come back. We know what happens to our owners. Our owners are happy because our financial performance improves.

Glenn: [00:04:34] You know, when I don’t do a lot of preparing before these conversations, and I really thought this conversation was going to go in a different direction, but you brought in a really interesting direction because you’re really explaining the backbone of you have to have everything in place with your team before you can even make that first guest feel welcome.

Sean: [00:04:52] Yeah, I think it’s all about preparation. You think about again, we’re in Black Desert today. This place launched a year ago. Think about all the moving pieces that were had to be coordinated, right? Trained on, coordinated. Practiced to get ultimately to the place of when a guest can come and experience it. You want that to be refined now, at the same point we’re learning every day. Yeah. Of course, every day and every guest experience, we’re learning something new. And I think, you know, ultimately when you have an empowered team member, an empowered team member is going to raise their hand and they’re going to say, hey, what if we did that? Yeah, to me, that’s when you have the most success and the most magic is made on the guest experience is when the team is, is is making recommendations, making suggestions to make the guest experience better.

Glenn: [00:05:30] And I would suggest if your team is not making suggestions and fully participating, then maybe it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate everything because something is not right. That’s right. Right. Not saying you’re doing something wrong, but you might have an opportunity to do something even better. That’s right.

Sean: [00:05:46] Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, you know, at the end of the day, sometimes us as leaders, we think we have all the answers, right? It’s just not reality. The front desk agent, they know what that guest is experienced on their travel. And they can make recommendations on how to make their stay more enjoyable from the first minute they walk into your property. Same thing with our housekeepers. They’re up on the guest floors. They’re talking and engaging with customers all day long. They’re seeing in the guest room of things guests are using and not using. To me, that’s where real empowerment comes from.

Glenn: [00:06:12] Beautiful, I love it. What a great interview we had over here with Sean. I’m Glenn, thank you so much for watching. You know, go out, do something. If you’re a if you’re a general manager, go empower your teams today. Do it right now. And be sure to stay tuned for more chapters of our exclusive series on the customer journey with our friends over at Coral Tree. See you later. Bye bye.