January 19, 2017
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company’s training managers and senior hotel executives give personal, two-day demonstrations of “Gold Standards” to all new employees. Three weeks later, the orientation units reconvene for follow-up sessions, after which the employees are considered “Ladies or Gentlemen at The Ritz-Carlton”
To cultivate customer loyalty, Ritz-Carlton Hotels has a rule: “Any employee who receives a guest complaint owns the complaint” The hotel chain makes a commitment to teaching employees HOW to provide world-class service. First-year managers and employees receive 250 to 310 hours of training.
After they have completed initial training, first-line employees such as housekeeping, busboys, etc., have the authority to spend up to $2,000 to immediately correct a problem or handle a complaint. Managers can spend up to $5,000. Now that?s empowerment.
At every level, The Ritz-Carlton is detail-oriented. Steps for all quality-improvement and problem-solving procedures are documented, through data collection and analysis.
For example, to meet its goal of total elimination of problems, The Ritz-Carlton has determined that there are 970 potential instances for a problem to arise during inter-actions with overnight guests and 1,071 such instances during interactions with meeting event planners.
Customer service standards have been established for every instance and every employee has been trained and empowered to uphold those standards.
Ritz-Carlton officials know this will create a win-win-win situation. The employee feels good about himself, the guest is happy, and the company will keep the business.
In an independent survey, ninety-nine percent of guests said they were satisfied with their Ritz-Carlton experience; more than eighty percent were “extremely satisfied.”
Ritz-Carlton management works hard to make employees feel valued–because that’s what “Loyalty Leaders” do!