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Ellis Communications, Inc. - NEWS STORY
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For Immediate Release:
June 23, 2010 |
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All casinos can provide
outstanding customer service that leads to a successful brand,
but they must have a turnkey system in place to make it all
happen. In this article, Martin R. Baird, chief executive
officer of Robinson & Associates, Inc., outlines the best
practices of such a system.
Every Casino Can and Should Implement A Turnkey System for
Success
By Martin R. Baird
If Southwest Airlines can establish a nationally recognized
brand by providing customer-pleasing service, then a casino
should be able to do exactly the same. In fact, Forbes magazine
has identified stellar service as one of seven secrets to
successful corporations.
Publisher Rich Karlgaard wrote in an opinion piece that “the
trick is being true to your brand and never promising service
you can’t deliver.” Karlgaard notes that Southwest customers
gladly print their own boarding pass, stand in line and scramble
for available seats because that’s the expectation Southwest
sets. The airline delivers a good record of on-time arrivals.
And flight attendants are free to laugh and entertain
passengers. “The message is: We’re all in this crowded aluminum
tube together, so let’s relax and have fun,” Karlgaard says.
Every single casino on the planet can do this. They can
establish service standards so they never promise more than they
deliver. They can set realistic expectations of an outstanding
gaming experience so guests feel comfortable with what they find
on the casino floor. All guests are in the same building and
casinos can make sure they have fun while they are there. In the
process, a brand is established.
But casinos must have a system in place to make all that happen
– a turnkey system of best practices that gauge, monitor and
improve the casino’s performance and guest service. The end
result is guests who are far beyond being simply satisfied with
their gaming experience. They are advocates for the casino and
will return to play again and generate new business through
positive word they spread about the property.
The best practices that casinos adhere to are critical. I
believe those practices are leadership, program management,
goals and metrics, incentives, action planning, improvement, and
guest and employee closure.
Leadership. Management must act as leaders to create a
culture that clearly demonstrates how important guest advocates
are. A property’s executives and managers must do more than
simply support the changes needed to generate improvement. They
should lead by example. For any improvement program to be
successful, it must start with and be guided by management’s
vision and ability to lead people to a new place. An idea can
start at any level of a casino, but for it to have maximum
impact, it needs to be embraced and exemplified through
leadership.
Program Management. This is one of the areas that casinos
will find challenging. If your people are all busy working, how
can they add a project like managing advocate development to
their plate? It’s also challenging because creating more
advocates requires the effort of all departments, not just one.
So if you have a person from table games managing the program,
how will that make the people from F&B or slots feel?
Most casinos will be more successful if they delegate program
management and support to an outside company. An outside firm
won’t have the bureaucracy to deal with and it will have a
single focus that it is accountable for.
Goals and Metrics. Measurable goals and metrics should be
established for all departments within the casino. They should
be tied to a common goal to create incremental progress and
profits. Many casinos spend a significant amount of time and
energy developing goals and metrics so they can measure and
judge the performance of a person or a department. The weakness
I see many casinos facing is that the goals are not connected to
the department and its ability to create advocates. The goals
should add value to the casino over time.
Incentives. Once you have relevant goals, you want to
have “carrots” or incentives in place to encourage employees to
embrace the new behavior or system. If smiling will create more
guest advocates, what incentives do you have in place that are
directly connected to that behavior? To be effective, incentives
must be specific. They also need to have a positive effect on
the entire casino. For optimum results, the entire team should
have identical goals and incentives.
Action Planning. Now comes the next major hurdle and that
is action! For a program to be successful, it must have an
action plan that lays out in detail who will do what, when they
will do it and why they will do it. This plan is the cornerstone
of improvement. It turns a dream into actionable items.
Improvement. Internal improvements should be identified
and implemented to create more guest advocates. The improvement
process likely will involve participant-centered training for
all employees. For people to improve, they need to know what is
expected of them and the best way to do that is through training
that uses accelerated learning. This technique makes learning
fun and that, in turn, helps people adopt new concepts. Poorly
executed improvement makes the entire process painful and
ineffective.
Guest and Employee Closure. Employees will want to know
how things are progressing. Keeping them informed gives them
closure. As part of the system, guests should be asked how the
casino can be a better place to play. Guests have closure when
the casino tells them how their input was used.
I have just outlined a program for success based on internal
improvement, outstanding service and guest advocacy. The
Southwest Airlines brand didn’t happen by accident. Without a
doubt, Southwest also created a system for success and then
moved forward. Your casino can and should do the same.
To read other articles by Martin Baird, go to
www.casinocustomerservice.com/post.htm
Martin R. Baird is chief executive officer of Robinson &
Associates, Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based consulting firm to the
global gaming industry that is dedicated to helping casinos
improve their guest service so they can compete and generate
future growth and profitability. Robinson & Associates is the
world leader in casino guest experience measurement and
improvement. For more information, visit the company’s Web sites
at www.advocatedevelopmentsystem.com and www.advocateindex.com
or contact the company at 206-774-8856. Robinson & Associates is
an associate member of the National Indian Gaming Association.
CONTACT: Tom Ellis
Ellis Communications, Inc.
Phone (417) 881-5635
E-Mail tellis@casinocustomerservice.com
Yahoo IM tom_ellis46 |
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