CLIENT

• Leading International Hospitality Company
• Worldwide Reservations Organization
• Consistently Rated as having Lowest Cost and Highest Customer Satisfaction

BACKGROUND

This assignment with the world’s leading hospitality company involved the worldwide reservations organization, which was recognized internationally as “best in class.” Third party surveys consistently rated this organization as the lowest cost, highest customer satisfaction provider in its industry.

Accordingly, our involvement was triggered by a commitment to aggressive continuous improvement and operational excellence. We were engaged to implement a strategic transformation, which would raise levels of selling effectiveness, while protecting the client’s world class status with respect to service and cost. Shortly before we began, the client had consolidated three brand call centers into one linked network.

Our partnership began with the objective of significantly improving sales effectiveness as measured by the conversion of inbound calls into room reservations. Our challenge was to transform the culture of the organization from compliance and order taking, to one of revenue generation.

KEY ISSUES

• The performance measurement and management systems and practices needed to be completely re-designed, as they were focused on compliance, rather than results
  • Measures of call conversion were absent
  • There were variances up to 80% within and across teams for all associate performance metrics
  • Adherence to procedures for reporting, sequencing of activities and escalation varied greatly between teams
• A recent streamlining of managerial levels caused significant confusion about roles and responsibilities
• Forecasting and planning, while using one of the most advanced systems, lacked precision and the ability to isolate variances in critical parameters.
• The existing incentive was not aligned with the new strategy and had become a de-motivator to high sales performers