With GuestWare's Help, Problem Experience Rate Plummets at Torrance Marriott
"GuestWare helps us identify deficiencies before they ever inconvenience a guest."
Paul Cahill, General Manager
GuestWare and Marriott's At Your Service Program are Perfect Combination
TORRANCE, CALIF. - The Torrance Marriott, a 487-room, full-service hotel located in the heart of the South Bay of Los Angeles, is turning its problem experience rate upside down with the help of GuestWare, the lodging industry's leading customer relationship management solution.
In 2004, the problem experience rate at the hotel was 23 percent. In February 2005, just eight months after the installation of GuestWare, the problem experience rate dropped to just 12.7 percent. While GuestWare has been an integral part of the rate reduction, a lot of the credit also can be given to the hotel's At Your Service (AYS) team members who tenaciously track every possible incident and log it into GuestWare.
"Our goal is to get under 20 percent for all of 2005," says Charlie LaMont, AYS Manager.
Being mindful of problem experience rates is critical at the hotel that hosts corporate clientele from four major airlines as well as area firms such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan.
Guest response process centralized
Prior to GuestWare and AYS, calls from guests with requests or complaints were not centralized but directed to the hotel's individual departments. Only the engineering department had a well-structured incident tracking process in place.
"That was not a good process," LaMont says. "If one department was working on something, the other department did not know what was going on. There was not much tracking and it was difficult to know what was resolved."
"It was kind of like we were living in the dark ages," adds Paul Cahill, general manager at the hotel.
As part of AYS, a call center was put in place and GuestWare was implemented to centralize the tracking of requests and incidents. Now, when a call comes into the call center, the request is logged into GuestWare and then dispatched using GuestWare's SmartRunner paging system. The text message on each page includes the guest's name, room number and type of problem.
When an issue is resolved, the person receiving the original page sends a "close" message back to GuestWare using the pager. As part of the hotel's guest response process, guests then receive a call from an AYS associate to ensure that the issue has been resolved to their satisfaction.
The Torrance Marriott uses SmartRunner for engineering and AYS, which includes bell staff, room service and loss prevention. The hotel also plans to use SmartRunner in its housekeeping department. When Marriott recently introduced its in-room fitness program - Great Health, Fit for You - the Torrance Marriott immediately used GuestWare to track and monitor equipment requests. Reports show what equipment guests request most.
In addition to calls coming into the call center, each department has an occurrence log sheet from which information is logged into GuestWare. The hotel also has set up a hotline for all hotel staff to call to record incidents that do not require an immediate response.
"The hotline works great," LaMont says. "AYS agents in our call center monitor that line throughout the day."
Call center agents are encouraged to log every possible incident into GuestWare. Weekly incentives such as free movie tickets are given to agents who log the most information.
GuestWare generates valuable reports
Before GuestWare's implementation, hotel managers relied on comment cards, anecdotal information and guest satisfaction scores to know how well they were meeting guest expectations. With GuestWare, however, detailed reports are generated to show specifically where there are problems and what the problem trends are.
"GuestWare gives me the tools I need to run helpful reports for each department," LaMont says. "Without those reports, which also help us anticipate problems before they arise, we would just be guessing most of the time."
A recent Top 10 incidents report generated out of GuestWare showed the hotel's maintenance staff exactly where they were having a recurring problem with televisions. Another report identified a recurring problem with water savers in the hotel's guest room toilet tanks.
"We also use GuestWare reports to track the response times of our engineers, room service runners and other personnel," LaMont says. "The reports help us know if we have enough associates working during our busiest times. The reports also help us hold our associates accountable. We post their response times on a daily basis."
If an associate does not respond to a guest call within 15 minutes, that incident is highlighted in red on the GuestWare Rapid Response Call Monitor screen. If a call results in a guest receiving some type of amenity, the cost of that gift also is recorded in GuestWare.
"Incident reports help me determine whether or not we are fixing things right the first time," Cahill says. "If it takes several attempts to fix a problem, it means there is either a training issue or a problem inherent in the system or product we are trying to fix."
Cahill says he uses GuestWare reports to support his capital planning process.
"We just finished our 10-year plan," he says. "We asked for funds to purchase new toilets. GuestWare reports showed our owner why we need them."
LaMont says he runs Top 10 Incident Reports on a weekly basis for the hotel's housekeeping and engineering departments. Each week, he looks back through those reports to determine what progress has been made and where opportunities for improvement remain.
"Through Top 10 reports we have been able to knock down some big problems," Cahill says. "We used to feel like we were running on a treadmill when trying to get ahead of our problems. Now we know we are truly making progress."
Repeat guest program powered by GuestWare
In addition to using GuestWare as a guest response and incident tracking tool, the Torrance Marriott also uses it to manage its repeat guest program. Each day, GuestWare's unique matching process is used to compare expected arrivals with past customers to identify each repeat guest.
"When we print out our arrivals report, the first guests who are listed are our repeat customers," LaMont says.
The Torrance Marriott rewards its repeat guests with an amenity on their 15th stay and every 10th stay thereafter. Those amenities are logged into GuestWare where their total cost can be tracked.
Using GuestWare, hotel associates also build profiles for each guest. Those profiles include guest preferences, visit history, past problems and requests. The detailed history enables LaMont and his team to surprise guests upon arrival and increase satisfaction when resolving difficult situations.
The Torrance Marriott also uses GuestWare to support its Perfect Room Team (PRT) program. The goal of PRT is to ensure that every hotel guest has a clean and maintenance-free stay. Staff at the hotel use GuestWare to plan, record and analyze the maintenance of guest rooms. The preventive maintenance process begins with a check list that each team member goes through during every guest room inspection. Any deficiencies are marked on the check list and then recorded in GuestWare.
"GuestWare helps us identify deficiencies before they ever inconvenience a guest," Cahill says. "The system also enables us to generate and track work orders quickly and efficiently. I get reports daily that show how long it took to process each work order."
With GuestWare and AYS in place, and a team of highly talented associates to support them, it would not be surprising at all if the Torrance Marriott easily surpassed its problem experience rate goal of 20 percent for all of 2005.