What do we see from the Ritz-Carlton?

　　for those people who admire luxury, Ritz hotels on The is a legend, the legend of which is endorsed by countless celebrities, one of the best-known of these is cocoa Chanel, a fashionable pronoun, from 1934 to the 1971 of her death, where cocoa has been living in the Ritz Hotel, where she has dedicated a private elevator. The elevator extends from her deluxe suite to the front door of Cambon Street in the back of the hotel, giving her easy access to her office.

As a result, these rich and famous people's attitude to this hotel can be described by attachment, Reliance, reliance, and more homes, and the hotel service staff to some extent is their family, they call their guests by name. No matter how the years pass, you're always on the same floor. Waiters and waiters, all of whom are familiar with your quirks, whether from the taste of their favorite oblong sweet cakes, the most annoying plaid sheets, or what kind of food the guest has to eat when a sick puppy is born. All this constitutes what is known as the most classic case of business services.

Countless well-known companies have come to learn from the mysteries of the Ritz, including the private wealth management team of Bank of America, and Apple managers in charge of the world's most lucrative retail stores. This spring, I also came to the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, in the heart of Silicon Valley, to explore the mysteries behind legendary services.

One of the secrets: How much loyalty customers really contribute

In the Harvard management Tutor, there is a course called customer-centric, the core idea is that not all customers are your God, only those loyal customers is your real wealth, the longer customers stay loyal, the more profits for the company, because they create a stable revenue stream, marketing costs will be reduced, And as customers become more familiar with the company, the cost of serving their customers declines, and loyal customers bring in associated sales--and they actively recommend it to friends and family. Such a group of people at the Ritz Hotel is called "lifelong guest".

1. Enviable contribution

When I asked Brian Grubb, senior leadership director at the Ritz, to ask for a "lifetime guest" income, it was not expected to get an accurate figure, but unexpectedly, he blurted out: "Our customers spend a lifetime of 1.2 million dollars." "This means that, based on the average price per room of 500 dollars a night, the guest will stay in the hotel for 2400 nights, and if you stay here two nights a month, stay for 100 years."

Seeing our surprise, he shared a story of what a group of guests it was. Brian worked at the Ritz Hotel in Half Moon B., California, on the beach, and one day he received an ordinary guest with two children in a restaurant. No one would think anything special in the shirt and shorts, feet on the beach shoes, walking down the street in Los Angeles. In line with the hotel's usual hospitality, Brian received a father-son line, and he could see that the children liked the place very much. When Check-out, the guests made a reservation of 8 seaview Suites. For the next 5 years, during the summer vacation, the guest will have to spend nearly 4 months with his family at the hotel, each of them living in the 8 sea-facing suites.

Obviously, if this is the kind of guests, the 1.2 million dollars is not so surprising. But how many of these guests are there? According to the Ritz, 22% of the guests contribute about 78% of the business, and 60% of the total revenue is from 2% of the guests, that is to say, one out of every 50 guests has more revenue than the other 49. In the outsider's view, this contribution is a little strange, but the Ritz Hotel people only see it as the first "good interpersonal relationships, long-term for Ritz to create lifelong guests" the inevitable result.

The question is, how do you know that the guest who has just entered the room is the most valuable one?

2. I don't know who the most loyal client is.

Brian says no one knows who will be the 2% guests, but all the Ritz-Carlton employees know that "I am in a timely manner responsive to the guest's expressed and not expressed desires and needs", and that "I have been given sufficient authority to provide our guests with a unique and memorable experience" of the two guidelines, Every guest who comes to the hotel is likely to become a ' lifelong customer '.

At the Ritz Hotel, there is a 15-minute group morning meeting that all staff have to attend every day to share their personal experience of creating a unique and memorable customer experience every day in the world.

At that time, I and other Chinese students felt that in a Beijing dialect to express the above meaning, that is, "have eyesight to see children," but, after listening to the following story, I deeply feel that it is not enough to reflect the requirements of the two guidelines.

A family arrives at the Sarasota Hotel on weekends with three little boys. They dined at the hotel's restaurant on the last night of their stay. When the restaurant closes, the waiter finds a fluffy puppy hidden under the seat cushion. The waiter immediately realized that one of the three little boys had dropped it. It was too late, so the waiters planned to return the puppy toy in an interesting way the next day. They put puppy toys in restaurants, make meals, play the piano and cook gourmet dishes in the kitchen, take pictures of them, and then match each photo with a storyline. They printed all the photos and created an atlas called "The Adventures of Puppies" for small guests.

The next day 9 o'clock in the morning, they sent the atlas and plush puppy toys to the guest's room. The little boy rejoiced at the sight of his lost puppy, and this wonderful experience was not forgotten in the child and his family.

The Ritz employees are creating a unique experience every moment of the day, and the story is being printed by the company as a tabloid in every Ritz corner of the world. Every employee is trying to create such a wonderful service. When this becomes a culture that has been used for countless times every day, lifelong customers will only be the inevitable result. It is because we do not know who is the next lifelong customer, so every guest who enjoys the Ritz serves the most heartfelt care.

Secret bis: How a type of employee is tempered

According to Harvard Business School professor James Hoescht, "service profit Chain" in the book found that the Ritz-created "lifelong customer" legend behind the love of work, high investment, with ultra-high job satisfaction of employees, only they will do everything possible to create unique unforgettable experience for guests. Are such employees at the Ritz? How did they get trained?

1. Incredible Category A staff and unexpected salary

Everyone is very familiar with the former General Electric CEO Welch's employee performance distribution theory, that is, the company's performance in front of the 20% of the employees are Class A, the middle 70% of the staff is B class, the performance of the 10% employees in the latter category is C. At the Ritz, the proportion of employees in category A is as high as 74%, and their goal is to achieve a high level of work for 80% of employees in the future, with only 17% of their B-class employees and a 3%~4% ratio of C-class employees who don't satisfy.

Another figure is that it takes an average of 7 years for a company in the United States to train a Class B employee into category A, while the Ritz only takes 12 months. The average turnover rate in the US hotel industry was 50%, compared with 15.9% in the Ritz in 2010, 1/3 per cent of the industry average, and mainly because of objective factors such as relocation of staff.

One of the trainee's HR managers heard this and immediately asked a question, "How much is the Ritz paying more than the peers?" Brian shook his head and said, "Our wages are just the industry average." "The answer is unexpected, more exciting people's curiosity, in the end what makes the Ritz employees?"

2. From concierge to senior leadership director

Talking about the Ritz's talent strategy, Brian is proud to share his experience, who has traveled almost every department in the Ritz and has worked in more than 10 cities. His first job is the concierge, the internal rotation system and staff career channel clear, for the staff's self-development provides a comprehensive and perfect help.

12 Interviews

The Ritz is very famous for its process of selecting people, any job need to pass 12 interviews, the first two are through the phone, the back of the 10 times are face-to-face, the most important part of the future work together with the team colleagues to interview, in the process as long as someone is not satisfied with the candidate, can not enter the next link, Only in this way can we find "people who are willing to serve from the heart, who can fit into the team". The Ritz sees it as "emotional input," and when the candidate really walks through these 12 processes, it feels like a winner, and likes to work together in the future, not paying much attention to pay.

Because of this particular process, the Ritz Category A staff ratio will be particularly high, and even if the skills are not proficient in the entry, because there is a strong desire and "service others" characteristics, can be quickly developed into a class of employees.

You're the best 1% in the world.

In any case, the hotel work is in the service, even in the world's most luxurious Ritz work, employees will inevitably have the idea of inferior. Brian showed us a short film they used to recruit employees, but only a minute, reflecting the company's motto: We serve the ladies and gentlemen in a gentlemanly manner. In the short film, showcasing the world's top 1% talent, scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, sports stars, at the end of the Ritz service stars, they proudly said: "We are the world's top 1% service personnel!"

Hotel staff treat guests as a gentleman, a lady, but also regard themselves as equal, with professional services to win the respect of the gentleman, Lady. Therefore, the people who work here value their values very much and agree that they are the best professionals. For this reason, when faced with misconduct, contempt or abuse of staff guests, the hotel will protect their staff, the guests shut out.

Secret three: Do employees only get authorization?

The Ritz has a well-known rule that any employee, whether room service, doorman, or bellman, without approval from his superiors, has a 2000 dollar quota to serve the needy guests. It is because of this authorization that the room staff will take a taxi to the airport when they find the guest's passport in the room, Chase from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and return the passport before the guest goes abroad.

So, the students asked a lot of Chinese-style questions: Is there anyone who spends this money on friends and family? Is there a special budget to estimate the proportion of this money to income? The students were amazed when they learned that the hotel had little additional expenditure each year and no one abused the authorization. Brian certainly gave a very American answer, it is the hotel's credo that the unique experience does not have to be paid to do, our staff is very important to the hotel to give them the power, we are committed to not spend or spend less money in the circumstances, to strive to give guests the most extreme service, Take the first responsibility when the guest encounters a problem and resolve it immediately.

For example, when a waiter chats with a guest, he learns that the guest's wife loves the spaghetti sauce provided by the Paris hotel and wants to eat it now. To provide an extraordinary experience, the waiter immediately provided the chef with the telephone number of the Paris hotel, where they could get the recipe and reproduce the special dish for the guests in San Francisco. Guests and wives were overjoyed when the room-service staff served a carefully prepared meal.

Brian said that a similar unique experience does not require a lot of money, but the need for a very "emotional input", the hotel is very trusting of their staff, at the same time, staff also love the Ritz, really willing to create a legend for the guests, which formed a virtuous circle.

However, Brian mentions that every authorized employee, in the reimbursement of this fee, needs to write down his story to spread out, and he showed us a tabloid, about 6 editions, which wrote about the various stories of the Ritz-Carlton hotels around the world. At the morning meeting every day, the group of people take turns to share the story of the newspaper, and then discuss how to create this legendary service in their work.

Hear here, it suddenly dawned on me that the Ritz had the best way to protect the authority-no one would spend money on their friends and relatives, because it would be impossible to explain to other colleagues and companies, and no one would abuse it, since everyone's purpose was to create a unique experience, but not necessarily to use authorized funds. Countless morning-spreading stories are all inspiring employees, and the Ritz uses the noblest and kindest ways to greatly respect and trust employees, and to use this trust to provide assurance for their business operations.

The Ritz is no doubt "customer-centric" best practice, and through this lesson, I find that culture and values are the greatest secrets in shaping legends. All of this comes from the personal credo of the hotel's founder, Julius Caesar, who believes that the most professional service to win respect and achievement is the concept and values that have created the Ritz-Carlton Hotel today's legend.

(author Xuhan is vice president of Kellogg Company (Keylogic)