Stop Fighting Fires: Building a Culture of Problem Solvers in Your Hotel - Adele Gutman

Josiah:  This episode is an excerpt from my full conversation with Adele about responding to reviews. There's a link in the show notes where you can watch that on YouTube. But we're going to pick up the conversation where Adele is talking about what she did when she was working at a hotel company on bringing her team along to investigate what happened when a guest wasn't happy. Here she is.

Adele: I always bring somebody else with me and I will say a team of us or me and the housekeeping director went up to the room and inspected it. And while we didn't really see the problem in this area, there was no question that we could see this, that, and the other thing. And we've made a plan on how to correct that issue. And over the next few weeks, we're going to be doing A, B, and C throughout the hotel to double check. that everything is going to be great for our future guests. You have to think about what are you going to do to prevent that kind of thing happening again. That is the most important thing. More important than any written response is the internal response. The action and the leadership and compassion that are put into action at your hotel to prevent it. Einstein said, intellectuals solve problems, but geniuses prevent them. I like that thought. But you know what? Learning how to prevent forest fires is better than learning how to put out forest fires, right? You really want to prevent them. It is worth the extra time to do it. People say, I don't have time to. Well, you know what? You're already making the time to deal with problems. So you have a choice, as they say. You either take the time to prevent the problems, and make things better for all of your guests or just constantly put out fires. And the worst part about that is not even that you're losing customers and you're losing potential referrals and recommendations. and great reviews that will attract new customers, you're also putting your line staff in a position of being attacked and getting these negative feelings from the guests, and they think that you've just hung them out to dry.

Josiah: And they-

Adele: It causes burnout. It really does. It's soul crushing. They're thinking to themselves, well, they stayed in this kind of a hotel. What did they think? Or perhaps they would say, you know what? I mean, management must know about this problem. They see it every day. They don't change anything. If they don't care, why should I care? You're causing that disconnect when you really want to create a culture of passionate people who are excited to be involved in an organization who are live to make people happy, to live to make things better, live to solve problems. I'm learning to solve problems every day at this company. One day I can be the general manager, one day I can be the vice president of the brand if I want to, because I'm learning every day. This is the kind of atmosphere I want to be in.

Josiah: I appreciate you getting into that because I feel like it's really important for people to understand the context and how to think about this. Again, it's not just churning out a review response. It is thinking about how does this help you be a better operator, right?

Adele: You know, I think that even if you're having AI assist you in writing the responses, everyone should be trained to respond to reviews in a way that actually increases revenue, reviews, recommendations, and referrals. You know, two factoids. Xerox, many years ago, did a study. They always thought of five-star reviews and four-star reviews as being the same thing or similar. They're both positive, right? But then they said, let's test it. They found out that those who gave their Xerox machines a five-star review were six times more likely to repurchase another Xerox machine than those who were four-star.

Josiah: Six times more likely.

Adele: Wow. Yeah. And so there's love. Love lives at five-star. Four Star is, it was clean. It was a room. I got what I expected. Nobody was rude to me. It was fine. I would stay there again if I had to be in that location. Am I recommending it to all of my friends? Am I so excited to tell people about it at parties? Can I not wait until my next experience there? Am I going to stay there more often, stay longer, choose an upgraded experience? Am I willing to pay more for it because I see the value? People just don't recognize the perceived value of your experience. We elevate that so much when we're getting five-star reviews instead of getting a ton of four-star reviews. If everything was good, then a hotel that has 100% five-star reviews would be the same as a hotel that gets 100% four-star reviews. This just isn't true. The one that gets the five-star reviews is going to get so much more visibility so much more consumer confidence, and such higher perceived value for that experience. So it's serious business to take care of reviews. It shouldn't be. I don't have time for it. You don't have time not to do it because then you're just spending time going on a hamster wheel looking for business and replacing customers that didn't come back with new customers. You're constantly having to have more advertising, more digital marketing, more social media, and more everything because you're not empowering your existing guests. to lead in bringing in new business. And by the way, it's completely hand in hand with the employee situation because your team members also, when they are getting complimented all day long when they're solving problems, they're being asked, what's your opinion about how we can fix this problem? What do you think we should do? By the way, you'll never get as good our a solution to fix a continuing problem from doing it in the executive office by yourself, you'll never get compliance the level of which you will get. How do you think we should solve this problem if you collaborate with your team, that's how you create future leaders. When people in the hotel say, I'm a creative problem solver, I'm always coming up with ideas to solve new things. My boss is always asking me for my opinion on what I think should make things better and asking me what do I need to be more successful at making people happy. And when I say something like not every time will I get exactly what I'm thinking of, but I can see that the seeds that I plant come to fruition in some way, come together with the other people on the team. And that's how people get confidence, which is, you know, so important in delivering five-star hospitality, even if it's a three-star hotel.