Exceeding customer expectations at Novotel
| Date | 01 January 2005 |
| Published date | 01 January 2005 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14754390580000585 |
| Pages | 8-9 |
| Author | René Angoujard |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
8Volume 4 Issue 2 January/February 2005
Exceeding customer
expectations at Novotel
staff, guests and clients. We decided to
review everything from uniforms to
recruitment to help us reach our vision:
to be the best hotel in London and the
best Novotel in the world.
Service Extraordinaire is the program
that will help us get there. It’s
concerned with customer service at all
levels. It took place over a year, starting
in March 2002. At its foundation are
four simple standards that all employees
should live by every day in the hotel:
1. Look professional – be professional. If
people look good and have a high-
quality uniform they feel good about
themselves.
2. Greet every guest and colleague. It’s a
big hotel and people aren’t used to
acknowledging everyone, but we
want it to feel like a village. If you
smile at someone, they smile back and
everyone feels better.
3. Look after your hotel. Take
responsibility, don’t leave things for
someone else. The staff area has been
redecorated to the same standard as
the guest rooms – the investment in
employees is highly visible.
4. Be positive. A positive attitude and
behavior will create positivity around
yourself.
Each employee has agreed to adhere to
these four standards, and their
importance and meaning are
communicated via meetings and
training sessions where employees have
the chance to be involved and ask
questions. Awareness of the four
standards has also been raised using
newsletters and posters.
Employees as coaches
Many companies stop at this stage, but
a key part of our strategy is to drive
success from all levels of the business.
We recognized early on that people
respond better to their peers than to
those in authority. Among our
employees, 10 coaches have been
selected based on their passion, attitude
and behavior.
The coaches were trained to coach
their colleagues and went through a
formal observation and evaluation. The
coaches support management and
employees to ensure that events,
activities and actions across the hotel are
at the agreed standard of quality. They
can provide coaching other employees,
regardless of department or function.
Every day coaches do a “quality
walk” round the hotel and note
behaviors compared to the standards.
Their report is sent by e-mail to
everyone in the hotel – it’s not,
however, an exercise in “pointing the
finger.” It’s about working together to
overcome obstacles to excellent
performance. For example, if a person
appears to have shoes that aren’t very
well polished, we can help them by
A
ny significant change, wether to
the structure, strategy or goals
of a business must be supported
by its people to succeed. This message
was embraced by the Novotel London
West when, in 2001, significant
investment was made to help us
transition from a “high-volume tourism”
hotel to a convention hotel. We
increased the number of meeting rooms
tenfold giving us the capacity to hold
meetings for up to 3,000 people.
Our previous model was based on
getting people in and out quickly. In the
convention and business market, we
needed to serve a different type of
customer: people who are more likely to
stay for longer than one night, have
business needs, are well-travelled and
know what they want. Having made the
investment in the hardware, we needed
to concentrate on the software – our
people.
Going back to basics
Many companies in the service industry
have tried going “back to the basics,”
but often don’t keep momentum going.
We started by getting feedback from
HR at WORK
,
Short case studies that demonstrate best practice in HR
Novotel has over 400 hotels and resorts
in 61 countries worldwide and is part of
the Accor hotel group.The first Novotel
was opened in 1967.
NOVOTEL
René Angoujard, general manager of Novotel London West, describes how the hotel’s commitment to
customer service excellence has underpinned its shift
from high-volume tourism to convention hotel.
© Melcrum Publishing Ltd. 2005. For more information, go to www.melcrum.com or e-mail info@melcrum.com
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