5.31.2022
In a world where more and more customers are vocal about their experiences, the delivery of consistent high quality customer service is paramount. In fact, 97% of global consumers report that customer service is important in their choice of and loyalty to a hotel brand. It is therefore paramount to have a clear image of the service you want to deliver, to ensure that your guests’ expectations are met or even exceeded, every time.
Equipping staff with the right competencies, skills, attitudes and tools is necessary to achieve standardization and consistency. For this, many properties set out a series of brand and operational standards. However, ensuring they are met and maintained is only the beginning, with managing and measuring following suit.
Industry expert Kristin Ingram, who has spent the last 25 years in leadership roles at hospitality groups including Hilton and LaTour Hotels, has a lot to say about the matter. On the question of the importance of managing and measuring standards, she says:
“I agree that ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure’, but I think that this statement is very similar to ‘Inspect what you expect’. If you’re not out there building a solid foundation, training and re-training, taking action and following up, then you’re going to keep getting the same result every single day – which is not a positive one.”
Streamlining Quality Assurance and self-audits
So, how did a professional in the field like Kristin, who now manages vacation properties with equally important brand standards, handle this challenge? Performing 30 quality assurance audits each year, which was no small feat. As she explains:
“At LaTour Hotels I was on the road quite a bit, performing Quality Assurance audits. One of the “interesting” things was all the manual work afterwards. I enjoyed discussions with General Managers and their teams, but at the end of the day you have to put all that information together. At that time I was using an Excel spreadsheet with 15 different tabs, lots of items and tasks on each tab. I was also taking photos, later having to remember where each photo was taken, then having to calculate audit scores.”
It was with the transition to digital technology that Kristin found a more efficient and effective way to manage the brand and operational standards in the various properties she was auditing.
Using digital technology to measure and improve standards across the property portfolio
One of the tools that Kristin relies on for efficient and effective management and measurement of standards is GoAudits, an all-in-one web and mobile platform to simplify and streamline quality and brand standards.
“My primary reason for reaching out to GoAudits was to identify a software that would be more efficient for calculating and documenting the QA audit inspections I performed each year in various parts of the U.S. and Caribbean.”
Using the GoAudits mobile app, Kristin and her team could simply tap answers on a digital checklist, attach and annotate photos, then generate a formatted report within seconds. Scores were automatically calculated, with trends and historical data easily available. Any findings were easy to immediately share with the right teams.
Not only did this digital tool enable Kristin to save time in compiling reports, but it also provided the parent hotel company with essential information to enable decision making. As she explains:
“This digital process assisted our management company in becoming better at document retention, also saves on ink, paper, time. GoAudits provides us with digital trending reports that assist us in our annual budgeting processes – we now know at each property the top 5 issues and can reserve funds to correct these issues, as well as trends as a whole throughout our entire portfolio.”
From digitizing corporate QA to daily operational checks in each property
Regular site inspections are instrumental to assess and evaluate each hotel’s processes and operations, and GoAudits certainly made it easier for Kristin’s team. With the benefits clearly apparent, the
organization then made the decision to implement GoAudits as the self-auditing tool in daily operations across all properties as well. Kristin explains:
“We created dozens of different digital inspection forms that today, are used daily to operate more efficiently. While there may have been some initial resistance to change, once the GMs saw how much money they were saving in supplies, training and payroll, it caught on like wildfire! Last year over 20,000 paperless audits were conducted”.
During the pandemic, the tool enabled the team to quickly roll out updated procedures to every single property, then adjusting them gradually as circumstances changed. Self-auditing became instrumental in the training process, and to ensure consistently excellent standards.
**GOAUDITS is a SaaS platform specifically designed for hospitality operations. It allows you to easily create and customize digital checklists. You can also ensure that any action items are taken care of in a timely manner, thanks to features like photo attachments, date stamps, and sending critical action points in real time to the correct staff member. Analyze results and trends in real-time with smart reports, summaries and dashboards. Save time and costs, ensure compliance with brand standards and COVID guidelines, accelerate and improve decision making.
Does your company have news it would like to share with our readers? If so, we invite you to review our editorial guidelines and submit your press release for publishing consideration.
