Convergence of service standards

Earlier this year my wife and I enjoyed one of our best ever holidays.  We are fortunate to be members of the over-privileged generation of baby-boomers and love to travel to sunnier climes in January.  This year we looked at temples followed by a week in a resort hotel in Southern India on the Coromandel Coast, Bay of Bengal.  As has become our normal holiday practice my wife spends her afternoons in the spa while I observe the service standards and have conversations with the staff on their career ambitions and on the training that they have received.  Once a training manager always a training manager.

Since the service at the Taj Vivanta, Fisherman's Cove (they deserve a name check) was so good I arranged to meet the hotel's learning and development manager.  He turned out to be a thoughtful young man called Kamlesh Trivedi.  Like many HRD specialists in the hospitality sector he had an operational background in the industry.  Our discussions led me to offer the following observations.

First, there is an irreversible global convergence in training practice taking place.  The initiatives that were underway at Fisherman's Cove were no different from those that I encountered when writing case studies on hotels in the UK and in Australia.  Kamlesh's training of new associates, their preferred term for staff, starts with a four day induction and is followed with the identification of a buddy in the business area  - for example, housekeeping, guest relations or food and beverage.  Progress is monitored using a checklist and through regular meetings between Kamlesh, the buddy and the associate.  A range of training interventions are delivered in the classroom; an extensive suite of bespoke e-learning interventions is available.   However, given the nature of the business and the pressures on time, much of the interventions designed to improve performance are delivered on a one-to-one basis in the workplace.

What was particularly interesting about the initiatives underway at Fisherman's Cove was the development of what they described as a guest-centric approach.  They had segmented their customers, not by nationality, but in terms of their attitudes, which translated into demands or requirements.  Staff were trained in recognising these segments and reacting accordingly. I discovered my wife and I were immediately recognised as 'Urban Crusoes' or leisure travellers. A typical 'Urban Crusoe' question, which I extracted from their training course literature, was 'Where can I go shopping, and can somebody accompany me to the area and help?'  By contrast the second category, the Business Traveller (or Master of Corporate Theatre) would be likely to begin with 'Welcome drink can wait; what's my password to the internet?'  Their other categories were the 21st Century Princesses (the woman travelling alone), the Night Birds and the Foodies.

This approach to segmentation had been developed by an HR manager within the Taj Group.  All credit to him or her. However, as anyone who has been involved in change management knows, it is easier to articulate an approach than to implement it.  That the associates at Fisherman's Cove seemed familiar and comfortable with these articulations of guest attitudes reflects well on the commitment to training standards at the hotel. 

However there is one factor that makes life much easier for them.  This is the good availability of highly motivated and ambitious staff.  It turns out that an Indian Degree in Hotel Management requires the student to spend half their final year in a hotel receiving practical training and experience.  Working for the Taj group is an attractive placement and the hotels will seek to recruit the more capable who pass through their hands.  This recruitment channel stands alongside a referral process where existing staff can receive a reward for successfully recommending their friends.  While Fisherman's Cove has some future anxieties about losing staff to competitors, the brand and the training seems to work.  The most striking fact is that every single one of the 300 plus associates was an Indian national.  Compare this with the desperate attempts to recruit and retain staff at some of our UK hotels.

All this led me to reflect again on the role of national culture.  I cannot accept that my holiday experience was so good because of the national character of the Indian.  Indeed elsewhere in India I have received some lousy personal service.  What matters are effective HR policies.  In the service industry there must be a disproportionate emphasis on selection: 'recruit for attitude and train for standards'. Obviously it is helpful, as is the case in India, if an attractive labour pool is available.  Then there must be a well-designed investment in staff development. This is the universal challenge in the sector.  It is heartening to see it delivered successfully.

Martyn Sloman is a visiting professor at Kingston Business School and a teaching fellow at Birkbeck College. He is principal consultant to TJ's L&D 2020 project and can be contacted at martynsloman@me.com