How Well Do You Follow This Checklist of Customer Service Tactics From Marriott in Your Contracting Business

October 18, 2018
Category: Achieve Consistent Business Success,Business Tips,Eliminate Problems and Fires,Get and Keep Your Ideal Clients

I got an email from one of my clients recently with a question that I’m sure many of you ask about your own businesses. It’s about how to give an excellent service experience to your customers.

The question:

Hi Bill,

Doing some work on the business today. I was recently discussing with one of my managers how impressed they were with the crew at Marriott.

So, my question for you is what are the essential elements to Marriott training to ensure that they deliver a great customer experience at every hotel. I’ve really never had a bad experience at one of their hotels and I’ve spent hundreds of nights in them in my other career, before opening my business.

I know we’ve made a lot of progress on our training, but we’re not at a world class level by any means and I want to replicate what the very best are doing in other industries.

I’d be interested in your thoughts and insights on this.

Joe

A little backstory:

You may not know this about me, but I was the head of market research for Courtyard by Marriott Hotels for six years. I started with Courtyard when we had five pilot test hotels in north Atlanta and left just after we opened our 200^th hotel.

For those of you who may not know, Courtyard Hotels were designed for frequent business travelers (road warriors) who wanted a consistently clean, comfortable hotel where they could relax or work at the end of the day, but didn’t want the extra bells, whistles and higher price of upscale hotels.

During my time at Marriott, I did all the market research to conclude the pilot test and then to roll out Courtyard regionally and ultimately nationally. And since all Marriott hotel chains aim to be the leader in quality and service in their respective categories a good percentage of the work I did related to our customer service experience. That’s why Joe asked me this question.

My Answer:

Hi Joe!

Wow, this sounds like an essay question from college! Here are eight ways that we ensured a consistently great customer service experience. I’ve listed them as actions that you can take.

Just for grins, as you read these over, rate your business on a 10-point scale where 1 = “Not good at all” and 10 = “We’ve got this nailed.” I guess I just can’t stop being a market researcher!

• Understand what target customers want and are willing to pay for.
  We spent a lot of time talking with our target customers to understand the services and the level of service that they wanted and were willing to pay for

We also worked to eliminate everything that wasn’t important to our target customers. This kept the costs down and ensured that we were meeting their needs in the best way possible.

We were continuously pressured, by corporate and non-target customers who stayed at Courtyard, to add services like room service and bell service that our target customers didn’t want. Adding those services would have required us to raise our rates and would have scared our target customers away.

• Design the customer experience.
  Research shows that only customers who rate you a 9 or 10 on a 10-point satisfaction scale will gladly refer you to their friends. If they really love you, on average they will tell 5 friends. So, to make sure that our customers had a great service experience, we spent a lot of time researching what customers want at each point of contact with us. For example, making a reservation, arriving at the hotel, checking in, etc. Some people call these points of contact “Moments of Truth” because each moment of truth has the potential to make or break the overall experience that your customer or prospect has with you.

We then designed each “moment of truth” so that our customers had a great experience at each.

• Continuously look for better ways to deliver our services.
  We were always looking for ways to create a better experience for our customers: simpler reservations, faster check in, better services, more personal service. Technology played a big role in this. For example, when a customer checked in, the front desk could tell if they had been to the hotel before so they could welcome the customer back. We also got hotel employees actively involved in identifying and solving persistent customer problems and in suggesting service improvements.
• Become one of the best places to work.
  Our CEO, Bill Marriott had a saying “Take care of the employees and they’ll take care of the customer.” That was really part of the culture at Marriott. I surveyed our employees twice a year to learn how satisfied they were with different aspects of their jobs and then we would make changes to ensure that our employees were highly satisfied. This helped us attract and keep the best.
• Develop and implement Solid Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s).
  When I was at Marriott, we had huge binders filled with SOP’s for every task for every job. Our business travelers wanted a consistently great experience at every hotel, every time. Consistent excellence was something that our competitors couldn’t deliver and SOP’s helped us achieve that goal. That doesn’t mean that you need SOP’s for every procedure in your business, but at least for the ones that are most important to consistently delivering excellent services for your customers.
• Train employees completely.
  Having big binders of SOP’s means nothing if the employees aren’t trained on them. So, at Marriott we trained our employees extensively both at the time of hiring and on the job.
• Teach employees how to think beyond the SOP’s.
  As good as Marriott’s SOP’s were, they couldn’t cover every situation that an employee might encounter. We found that when employees were faced with a situation that wasn’t covered in the SOP’s they didn’t know what to do. So, we created what we called “Empowerment Guidelines” which were rules of thumb that they could follow to solve customer problems or get our customers the help that they needed.
• Measure what matters.
  When I was at Courtyard, the management team at each hotel was compensated on their ability to meet their guest and employee satisfaction targets and their sales and profit goals. So, we continuously surveyed guests and employees on their satisfaction and monitored their financial results. Hotels also did inspections and we did mystery shopping to ensure that service was evaluated from several angles.

If one of these measures was below standard, someone from the regional management team would visit the hotel and help them figure out what was causing the problem was and they’d help create a development plan to fix it.

Measuring what was important to our customers and our company was a great way to celebrate those hotels that were performing well and to identify and fix problems before they became big issues. Since you have crews in a variety of places, and can’t get to them all, this is a good way for you to keep tabs on them.

How did you do?
Each of these eight areas were important to creating a consistently excellent customer experience. Let’s take the areas that need the most improvement and work on them in future coaching sessions.

I hope that this helps and I hope that I Aced this essay test! 

Bill

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