Service that Sells

• Sharpening your customer skills

Service Excellence

• A Blue Print to Touism Success

• Service Sells, Its Proven

A Fallacy in the Tourism Industry• A place of hospitality, must be a vibrant,

living thing, somehow we have got down to the idea of thinking that a hotel is a place where we sell beds and food and a restaurant is a place where we sell food and liquor. We aren’t selling that, don’t get distracted by that, those are secondary things.

Our Business

• We are primarily in business to make money - awards are great but they don’t pay the bills.

• We are in the business of creating an unforgettable experience at every turn, creating WINET…….at every level.

Winet

• Well I Never Expected That…..!

Exceeding Guest Expectation is the Key

Creating a Culture with People

To be employed….teach your employees the following:

• If you want to be respected - be respectable

• If you want to be liked - be likeable

• If you want to be loved - be loveable

• If you want to be employed - be employable

What Service Sells - It’s Simply Service Excellence

• Attitude

• Passion

• Enthusiasm

• Willingness to make a difference

• Willingness to learn

It is quite simple - the company with the best team wins… attitude is everything

So What Makes Companies Successful?

• Forbes magazine annual list of most admired companies rates companies by eight criteria:

Innovation

Financial soundness

Employee talent

Use of corporate assets

Long term investment value

Social responsibility

Quality of Management

Quality of produst and services

Employee Talent

THIS IS KEY TODAY

• A Business is a team not a solo performance

• What matters is your ability to unleash the potential in others, align their efforts and keep them enthused over time. The more superstars you have on your bench the better.

Optimising Your Talent

• Every employee has talent otherwise they would never have been employed

• Identify your talents needs• Harness the reason why people came to work for

you• Begin to understand why people arrive on time for

work everyday• Get to know people for the people they are and not

just employees who work for you…..

So How Do You Become a Killer Competitor through Service

• In time of increasing uncertainty, a cool head and common sense are invaluable business weapons

• When others are flapping and frantically trying to apply the latest management tools, it’s a good idea to remind yourself what actually matters and to work at it with a vengeance - keeping it simple and back to basics

Killer Competitor

• To be more competitive, you have to keep delivering more for less - and keep moving the bar

• The further and faster you can improve, the harder it will be for others to keep up… how often do we become complacent...

Optimising Resources

• Get to know your people - mentorship

• Get to know your peoples’ skills and limitations

• Harness the enthusiasm of the people who work for you

• Build a business around people not the product… products are a fad..they date and people copy your great ideas

What Should Be Measured

Yardsticks• Employee turnover

• Exit interviews

• Talking to customers asking what is good and what needs improvement

• Ask suppliers who they rate as employees who best represent the image of your business

• Employee retention vs Profit before interest

• Mystery guests

• Return cients vs new business written • Source of business

Transferring Best Practice

• Develop a culture of service• Develop your own personality• Instill a service culture• Coach rather than punish poor delivery• Be there…..• Get employees to choose their attitude• Make a difference at every step of guest interaction

• Strive to set an example at every employees interaction

with you….not only our guests

Strategic Choices

Is it:

• Product Leadership

• Customer Intimacy

• Operational Excellence through service

Case Study on Why and How Service Excellence Works

Case Study - The Royal Hotel Durban

• 159 years old

• Early 90’s voted best city hotel in South Africa for five years running

• Leader in Hotel Keeping in RSA in 90’s

• 272 rooms, 18 Banqueting rooms, 8 restaurants

The Reality

• 1998 - Inner City Decay

• Security was a problem

• Inner City died after 6.00pm

• Inner City tenants began the drift north to Umhlanga Ridge depleting the luncheon and conference business

• Revenues dropped 3 years running to the point of the hotel no longer being profitable

• Additional 325 rooms from the Hilton came on line

• Durban had a perception of being the poor cousin to Cape Town

The Choices

• Close the hotel

• Convert into inner city residential

• Cut costs further

• Close food and beverage outlets

• Close room stock

The Choices

• Close the hotel• Convert into

residential building• Cut costs further• Close food and

beverage outlets• Close rooms stock

• No due to perception• No - conversion too

expensive• Cut as far as we could• No - all restaurants

were profitable• Due to building design,

cost savings were not really there

The Decision

• Cut our wrists in a warm bath….

• Develop a world first strategy to stay in business and make profits….

• The Choice was simple…stay in business

What was the answer

• Create a USP

• Develop a service culture unparallel to our competitors

• In source - do not outsource

• Create service excellence through passionate people

The Process

• Dissect the business and see what was profitable and what was ego business

• Dissect the competition and see what they were not doing right

• Find the best people possible

• Create a workforce dying to serve and who can made a difference

The Process

• Identified the passionate and enthusiastic members of management and staff who loved serving people who did not just come to work for the money

• Promoted these people and asked the rest to retire early, leave or moved elsewhere in the company

• Looked around the company and brought people with a passion and experience to The Royal

The Process

• From 310 permanent staff we dropped down to 97 permanent staff and introduced..

• 180 management and chef trainees through the International Hotel School

• We had workforce overnight who wanted to serve, learn and who had passion and enthusiasm

The History

• The International Hotel School

– The Carlton Hote– The future of our business in hospitality lay in

young people– To many hotel managers and chefs leaving to go

overseas– A short term answer to the Carlton’s Inner City

Decay

The Problems Encountered

• New experience for our customers was a bit frightening at first

• 180 people with little or no hospitality skills - just raw passion

• A dated hotel• A very critical travel trade• Competitors criticized and belittled the move “The

Royal has become a training hotel - disgraceful’

The Difference Was…..

We knew what we were doing was right

Actions Taken

• Massive training in service and delivery to customers

• We spoke to our customers about what we were doing and asked them for suggestions and advice

• Created innovative food and beverage concepts and even a Theatre restaurant to get people back into the inner city at night

Actions Taken

• An innovative direct mail campaign to our customers who had left us

• We created a fresh new approach to getting business through young energetic passionate people

• We got young people to become involved in aspects traditionally left to the senior managers

• We told our staff what we were doing and what was expected of them

• We insourced our outsourced temp casual staff through The Food and Beverage Academy

Actions Taken

• Created new innovative banqueting packages• Started fun outside catering run by trainees• Had formal trainee dinners for the groups

management• Gave trainees the accountability of junior

managers with the responsibility which went with it

In short, we got people to believe that every decision in service

made a difference to a customer’s experience and had an impact on the profitability of the business

The Results…...

• Profitability in 10 months• Occupancy grew 13.5% in first year• Restaurants increased profitability by 18% in

first year• Reclaimed 83 corporate accounts previously

lost to competitors• Won the PMR award for best city

conferencing hotel….

The Results…..

• Almost a 0% staff turnover• 40 - 50 trainees every year now get recruited by Cunard

lines• In excess of 120 Management trainees now hold senior

management positions in the world top hotel brands• More than 26 non Three Cities Group Hotels have

internship trainee programmes• Three Cities Group now has in excess of 1000 trainees

training annually

The Benefits

• Royal hosted the Commonwealth Banquet - The Queen stayed for 6 days

• Vice President of the USA stayed

• Government Ministers, Kings, all stay at the Hotel

The Message

• Service Excellence only comes through training and adapting to changing business dynamics

• Service Excellence comes from thinking out of the box…. And not worrying what people say about you

• Service Excellence comes from empowering and mentoring people to become passionate about heir product

• Service Excellence comes from doing what is right for you and not what your competition does or is doing

The Message

• Service Excellence does not mean winning every award

– It means that any guest who uses your services leaves having had a memorable experience which they talk about and which they talk about and which keeps them coming back

In Conclusion

• We ultimately build an operation with pride. You tell people you are the best and now you have to make it the best

• You may not be there right now, you might be all the way at the bottom of the list but that commitment to being the best starts with developing people. When that happens your customers and staff will start giving you ideas on how to be the best

In Conclusion

• Training and developing young passionate people can be treated as just lip service

However

• Even more rewarding than Service Excellence is seeing a young person develop and succeed…..

Service Excellence is the basis of Everything

Manage It, Harness It, and

YOU WILL SUCCEED