by Whitney McCarthy | Apr 11, 2015 | Brand Protection, RizePoint
Picture the following scenario: You have your two small kids with you while you’re shopping in a general retail store. Suddenly, your youngest starts doing the potty dance. You hurry to the store bathroom before there’s an accident. Even though the store is clean and orderly, you find the bathroom’s another story. The floor is dirty and covered in paper towels. The stalls are gross, the stall door won’t lock, there’s little to no toilet paper, and the soap dispenser is broken. Even if you normally like that store, how likely is it that you’ll return to this store after that experience? I wouldn’t want to. Imagine this same scenario in a restaurant, and you have a recipe for a grand, “brand disaster” on your hands.
Bathrooms and Your Brand
There are a lot of things that affect the customer experience in a store — and you might not think that restroom cleanliness would make all that big of a difference. For some people, though, a dirty public bathroom actually creates feelings of anxiety, fear and disgust — feelings they’ll remember. Trust me, these are feelings you don’t want to have associated with your brand. In these situations, your bathroom can take over your brand.
We’ve seen firsthand the impact cleanliness has on in-store sales. A recent study found that 94% of people would avoid a store with dirty bathrooms. Women comprise a significant portion of shoppers in general retail stores. While some people may put up with a dirty bathroom for themselves, moms are likely to never return to a store that’s too dirty for their kids. (And don’t even get me started on the germ-conscious folks of today.)
Data Must Be Visible and Actionable
In many bathrooms, you’ll see a little cleaning chart on the wall with the initials of the employee assigned to clean the bathroom that day. Those lists are then logged by the manager and eventually (hopefully) passed onto the corporate office. For companies with multiple locations, data about bathroom cleanliness gets tossed into a giant pile of someday-we’ll-get-to-those papers, while the corporate leaders that need that information are left in the dark about where to make changes. If company leaders manage to determine which stores are doing poorly, what system do they have in place to ensure all pertinent data is visible and corrective action is in place?
If you’re serious about improving the quality of your brand by making sure all of your locations are meeting brand standards, you need an easier and more efficient way to identify problems and verify solutions.
When individual store managers and employees know they’re not being held accountable, performance often becomes lax and the quality of the customer experience can decline. You start to see this in stores where the management is reporting cleanliness and conduct in line with brand standards, while customer reviews are telling a different story. Company decision makers need a way to improve accountability in each of their stores, because that which gets watched gets done.
So now we have identified three major issues that need to be resolved:
- How are you keeping track of issues that could be identified?
- Once you have identified those issues, how to you know if the prescribed corrective action is actually being taken?
- How are you comparing what the managers say they do to what their customers are saying?
An Effective Solution
Technology exists, which requires no capital investment and minimal IT support, which can easily resolve each of these issues in a simple and effective way.
RizePoint’s business performance software allows managers to take the pen and paper out of the equation and get data into the hands of company decision makers instantly. Here’s how it works: Managers make their rounds with a digital device like a smartphone or iPad. Then, from the RizePoint platform loaded on their device, they’ll complete the audit forms requested by their company superiors. This data is instantly uploaded via the cloud to company decision makers, who can determine corrective action procedures immediately (or you can automate these according to the responses given). Managers are then notified instantly of the corrective action required and have to submit a report back to corporate as soon as the correction has been made.
In addition, it’s available in 40 languages, which allows managers worldwide to capture data in virtually any language they may need.
This type of business performance software allows you to address each of the three major issue previously mentioned by providing:
- A quick and effective way of diagnosing problems
- Measures for holding each manager accountable for completing corrective action.
- Information so you know exactly how stores are performing when you compare them to customer reviews
Another benefit of this automated process of return and report is the ability for your company to determine which stores have the best practices already in place. Lets say that of your 100 locations, these are 30 that are nailing it every time when it comes to restroom cleanliness. You can then dig deeper and see what the best practices are, what they’re doing right, and then use that information to train the lower-performing locations and bring everybody up to the highest standard.
“Stalling” your store’s profitability is a brand disaster that can easily be remedied. Use the technology available to stop reacting and start responding today.
by Whitney McCarthy | Sep 11, 2014 | Brand Protection, RizePoint
Effective communication between management and employees is critical in today’s fast-changing and ever-growing marketplace. For example, employees feel involved when upper management encourages sharing of ideas and opinions. Engaging employees helps them see that their jobs have meaning and helps create a connected and accountable culture. Generally, this leads to higher productivity, employee retention, and job satisfaction.
But one of the most important effects of good internal communication in any service industry is its ability to establish a shared understanding of success between management and employees.
You may have read this humorous story, or another like it. It is said to have taken place at a London hotel, with the letters later released to the London Sunday times. Whether it’s real or fictitious, it’s still a great example of how good intentions can lead to a bad customer experience when communication breaks down or becomes ineffective.
Dear Maid,
Please do not leave any more of those little bars of soap in my bathroom since I have brought my own bath-sized Dial. Please remove the six unopened little bars from the shelf under the medicine chest and another three in the shower soap dish. They are in my way.
Thank you,
- Berman
Dear Room 635,
I am not your regular maid. She will be back tomorrow, Thursday, from her day off. I took the 3 hotel soaps out of the shower soap dish as you requested. The 6 bars on your shelf I took out of your way and put on top of your Kleenex dispenser in case you should change your mind. This leaves only the 3 bars I left today which my instructions from the management are to leave 3 soaps daily. I hope this is satisfactory.
Kathy, Relief Maid
Dear Maid – I hope you are my regular maid.
Apparently Kathy did not tell you about my note to her concerning the little bars of soap. When I got back to my room this evening I found you had added 3 little Camay’s to the shelf under my medicine cabinet. I am going to be here in the hotel for two weeks and have brought my own bath-size Dial so I won’t need those 6 little Camay’s, which are on the shelf. They are in my way when shaving, brushing teeth, etc. Please remove them.
- Berman
Dear Mr. Berman,
My day off was last Wed. so the relief maid left 3 hotel soaps, which we are instructed by the management. I took the 6 soaps which were in your way on the shelf and put them in the soap dish where your Dial was. I put the Dial in the medicine cabinet for your convenience. I didn’t remove the 3 complimentary soaps which are always placed inside the medicine cabinet for all new check-ins and which you did not object to when you checked in last Monday. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Your regular maid,
Dotty
Dear Mr. Berman,
The assistant manager, Mr. Kensedder, informed me this morning that you called him last evening and said you were unhappy with your maid service. I have assigned a new girl to your room. I hope you will accept my apologies for any past inconvenience. If you have any future complaints please contact me so I can give it my personal attention. Call extension 1108 between 8AM and 5PM. Thank you.
Elaine Carmen
Housekeeper
Dear Miss Carmen,
It is impossible to contact you by phone since I leave the hotel for business at 7:45AM and don’t get back before 5:30 or 6:00PM. That’s the reason I called Mr. Kensedder last night. You were already off duty. I only asked Mr. Kensedder if he could do anything about those little bars of soap. The new maid you assigned me must have thought I was a new check-in today, since she left another 3 bars of hotel soap in my medicine cabinet along with her regular delivery of 3 bars on the bathroom shelf. In just 5 days here I have accumulated 24 little bars of soap. Why are you doing this to me?
- Berman
Dear Mr. Berman,
Your maid, Kathy, has been instructed to stop delivering soap to your room and remove the extra soaps. If I can be of further assistance, please call extension 1108 between 8AM and 5PM. Thank you.
Elaine Carmen,
Housekeeper
Dear Mr. Kensedder,
My bath-size Dial is missing. Every bar of soap was taken from my room including my own bath-size Dial. I came in late last night and had to call the bellhop to bring me 4 little Cashmere Bouquets.
- Berman
Dear Mr. Berman,
I have informed our housekeeper, Elaine Carmen, of your soap problem. I cannot understand why there was no soap in your room since our maids are instructed to leave 3 bars of soap each time they service a room. The situation will be rectified immediately. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.
Martin L. Kensedder
Assistant Manager
Dear Mrs. Carmen,
Who the hell left 54 little bars of Camay in my room? I came in last night and found 54 little bars of soap. I don’t want 54 little bars of Camay. I want my one damn bar of bath-size Dial. Do you realize I have 54 bars of soap in here? All I want is my bath size Dial. Please give me back my bath-size Dial.
- Berman
Dear Mr. Berman,
You complained of too much soap in your room so I had them removed. Then you complained to Mr. Kensedder that all your soap was missing so I personally returned them. The 24 Camay’s which had been taken and the 3 Camay’s you are supposed to receive daily. I don’t know anything about the 4 Cashmere Bouquets. Obviously your maid, Kathy, did not know I had returned your soaps so she also brought 24 Camay’s plus the 3 daily Camay’s. I don’t know where you got the idea this hotel issues bath-size Dial. I was able to locate some bath-size Ivory which I left in your room.
Elaine Carmen
Housekeeper
What’s striking about this example is that the maids and other employees at the hotel didn’t necessarily do anything wrong—there was simply a breakdown in communication that led to the series of events causing Mr. Berman’s poor customer experience. It’s probably safe to assume that he would never return.
Perhaps a technology-driven tool to ensure communication between the maids and their management would have prevented this occurrence. Many hotels and other companies use similar systems today, and the expansion of this type of technology has helped the hospitality industry to meet and surpass guest expectations for years.
We mentioned how essential it is set the bar of employee expectations through regular communication. Corporations that have a steady stream of regular communication between management and others are able to create a shared understanding of success, meaning that the employees know what is expected by management and know what it will take for customers to have a positive experience. In the example above, employees would have known that to be successful they would need to ensure Mr. Berman had a great experience. Perhaps as a result of that goal, each staff member would have followed up with one another to ensure the guest’s requests and needs were met as desired, to avoid disastrous miscommunication.
Many times, as in this case, employees become trapped by processes—like the maids putting out the soap daily (only to scramble from the unordinary guest request). It is the responsibility of management to consistently communicate and keep employees thinking about the big picture (like putting customer experience above daily processes). When regular, consistent and effective communication is disseminated through organizations, customer experience disasters, like this, can be avoided.
