“Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death.”
- Elon Musk
So there I was, staring down the barrel of a business on the verge of collapse. It’s not an exaggeration. We had entire Airbnb accounts getting shut down. We were scrambling to build new accounts and listings, and find ways to convince Airbnb that we were a new management company – not the old crummy one that was consistently disappointing the guests they were sending us. I had problems both internally and externally. I decided to get my own house in order first. So here’s what I did:
Internal Team: We tried a lot of things, and found a handful that actually worked.
- We hired mid-level managers to help with day-to-day, moment-to-moment situations that arise. Experienced Virtual Assistants who had spent years in the STR industry and had a strong handle on how to deal with just about anything. This was incredibly helpful in not just having extra support dealing with all the issues that can happen when your servicing hundreds of guests per month, and dozens daily – it also allowed me and my partners to take a step back from the business, evaluate it from a high level, and come up with strategies for our managers to implement.
- Daily sync meetings: I met with my managers everyday, 7 days a week. I was there waiting for them when they clocked in for their shift, they spent their first 30 minutes of the day with me. Everyday. For I don’t know how long, but it was a few months of that. During that time I mostly did what’s called MBWA (Management by walking around) – I asked what the biggest challenges were, what guests were unhappy about and why, and what ideas they had to solve pernicious issues. I kept a journal during the daily meetings, and simply put: I worked hand-in-hand with my managers every day for weeks on end helping them troubleshoot, problem solve, getting things they needed to support their efforts, and giving them freedom to try new things and fail. I was a sounding board as well as an idea and strategy generator. We were partners. We still are. And we still meet several times a week just to stay synced up.
- THINK Protocol – this is one of the first things I developed from that high level I spoke about. One thing I liked to do during daily meetings with managers was open up our central inbox for guest comms and read through the messaging. This was a real frustrating time if I’m being honest, because it seemed that no matter what message I pulled up, I could find multiple issues with the way our front desk was communicating with guests and handling issues. Our team often took too long to respond, didn’t solve whatever problem or issue the guest was bringing to them, they were not accurate when they answered information about the property or our policies, they were overly “Fluffy” (Oh my goodness! Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention! I will not rest until this is resolved for you! Rest assured, your problem is my priority!) – and then they would literally do nothing… – no follow up, no action steps, just fluff. It was like they thought that if they just included a lot of promises and exclamation marks in their communications, that would be enough. No more was needed. I’ve since come to learn that this is a big part of Filipino culture, which is where a majority of our workforce is based, and apparently this is perfectly acceptable behavior for them in their culture. Obviously, this is a horrible practice for managing guest experience. So, I came up with a way to address all of these problems.
Timely – Respond to guest inquires within 5 minutes
Helpful – Solve the problem they bring to you.
Indisputable Accuracy – Simply put, don’t say anything untrue.
No Fluffy BS – Be professional and to the point (The American way if you will).
Keep Up! – Follow Up – Always circle back to make sure the problem gets solved and stays solved.
Since the launch of this initiative/framework for communicating with guests and dealing with the issues they bring to us, we have graded each individual member of the front desk on how well they implement each aspect of THINK, and we bonus the top performers. Every month. We have seen consistent improvement in that department, and new hires catch on quite quickly.
Getting on the same page with managers regarding all the problems we need to address and with the front desk on how we deal with guest problems in particular were both great starting points for the months long road ahead. We were oriented and aligned in the right direction, together. The next beast we had to tackle was a pernicious problem of overwhelm that my managers quickly found themselves dealing with. They found themselves in a situation where every problem was being funneled to them instead of to me and my partners. The idea of THINK was sound, but in reality we had only replaced ourselves (Top leadership, company owners) with someone else to deal with the funnel of problems coming to us. The “H” in helpful was being delegated to managers. It was somewhat of a stall in progress that we had to address.
Part 1 When Growth Nearly Killed Us Link here
Part 2 Reinventing Guest Communication Link here
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