Customer Journey Series, Ch. 4: Building It With Your Team

Glenn: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody, it’s your hospitality. Friend Glenn here and our continuing series on the customer journey. I want to thank our friends over at Unifocus. Unifocus, Technology that drives value. Please check them out at Unifocusdot com. I got Kaitlin Broumpton. She is I gotta read this title because I’m at a conference and I’ve been here too long. Director of Quality and Guest Experience strategy with CoralTree. And you guys have been focusing on the customer journey. And I’m curious as to how are you working with properties to make sure that it’s implemented, but more important that they have the passion to bring experiences to life?

Kaitlin: [00:00:34] Yeah, I think it’s so encouraging when we go to a property because we get to innovate and really bring the soul of the property to life. So my counterpart, Angela kind of touched on, like, you know, we bring the soul, we get the workshop together, and we get to go in and meet with property leaders from all different facets and different outlets and really just ideate. What is that story at arrival? What is that story throughout the guest day, and what do we want to do upon departure to make sure that they come back? And so we just innovate, cultivate ideas, and then bring that to life and really just work on a plan to make it happen.

Glenn: [00:01:09] So you work on that plan to make it happen. How do you get people to buy into it? Because change, even change for good, is always difficult.

Kaitlin: [00:01:18] I think, you know, once properties and team members see that we’re trying to cultivate the story of the brand of the property. They get so excited about the ideation and also when they have a seat at the table and we’re not telling them what to do, it really goes so much farther.

Glenn: [00:01:35] So if you’re not telling them what to do, what are you not telling them to do?

Kaitlin: [00:01:40] So how does that work? Yeah. So I mean, we just encourage great ideas.

Glenn: [00:01:44] More of a buy in.

Kaitlin: [00:01:44] Yeah. And we just want to, you know, again if they say, okay, we want to bring this welcome beverage, we’ll kind of tweak it and say, well are those the right ingredients. Is that really local to your area? You know how to bring in the authentic local, you know, culture to to the property.

Glenn: [00:02:01] Okay. So how are you figuring that out then? Are you depending on team members on the ground or regional folks? How does that all come together? Maybe it’s communal.

Kaitlin: [00:02:09] Yeah. Definitely communal. I think it’s a shared effort. You know, we do so much wonderful work ahead of time doing the brand pillars and that sort of thing. And then once the team members are really engaged. I mean, they are they have the knowledge. They’ve been living there for forever. And so they really get to cultivate these beautiful ideas, and then we help them figure out how to flush it out and bring it to life.

Glenn: [00:02:29] Give me an idea. Give me an example of one beautiful idea that was cultivated.

Kaitlin: [00:02:33] Yeah, sure. So, I mean, we just did a workshop at Seaport in Boston, and they’re doing these brilliant arrival cards because multiple different people are traveling for different reasons sports games, college universities, different things like that. And so they’re putting together these brilliant cards with a QR code, and they’re going to really give you the knowledge and the tools and help you plan your stay ahead of time and when you get there. So it’s just it’s really fun. But the team was able to bring those ideas to life because they know why guests are traveling.

Glenn: [00:03:01] Right. That’s a really clever idea, to be able to put it in those buckets and then have a choose your own adventure. Exactly right. Yeah. Because people want to be coddled, but they also, from time to time, want to empower themselves to be able to do that. Exactly. And that’s what it’s all about creating choices.

Kaitlin: [00:03:15] Agreed. Yeah, absolutely.

Glenn: [00:03:16] Awesome. Caitlin, thank you so much. I really appreciate you guys. Love you guys out there. Thanks for for watching. Like share subscribe. It’s a fun series. We’ll be back with another episode featuring Angela Burke of Guest Experience. See you all later. Bye.