GRAND RAPIDS, MI—Though it’s only been open since 2007, the JW Marriott Grand Rapids here has been the top-ranked North American property for the Marriott International, Inc. flag in customer satisfaction three times, most recently last year. What makes 2014 stand out among the others is that the number-one spot was achieved in the first year that the company’s guestVoice customer feedback system was implemented.
According to Marriott, GuestVoice integrates a shorter, simpler guest satisfaction survey with social media monitoring. By combining both survey and social-media feedback, guestVoice delivers enhanced guest feedback and insights, enabling properties to take action on issues and concerns and facilitate a more timely response. The tool also provides powerful and flexible capability for the company to better understand trends and causes of both guest issues and positive experiences.
“Prior to guestVoice, Marriott always had a tracking system in place for overall guest satisfaction, but [the company]made huge enhancements with a new format and dashboard program,” said Brian Behler, assistant general manager of the 23-floor JW Marriott Grand Rapids, which features 329 guestrooms, 11 suites and 15,369 sq. ft. of meeting space. “Guest feedback now comes in real time whereas, before, surveys would be delayed in getting posted. The guests want to use their mobile devices and other forms of communication besides logging into a specific website to do their feedback, so guestVoice provides that. As soon as guests depart the hotel, they receive a survey they can complete online, and we get the results immediately through guestVoice. We also have an online app that the hotel managers can access on their mobile devices to also see the activity of feedback.”
The guestVoice system also pared down the number of questions in the guest satisfaction survey—Behler noted that he would get complaints about the number of questions in the old one—and boosted the reporting to management.
“Two of the other big enhancements with guestVoice are more intuitive questions that are specific to our hotel brand. It is much more concise and keys in on factors such as how your overall dining experience was and how your overall hotel experience was. If you went to the spa, it asks how that experience was. Of course, more concise means that scoring mechanism is pretty tight.” Behler said. “For us on the operations end, we get some pretty fantastic reporting, where we can break down different things and really try to troubleshoot where our service failures are happening and why they are happening.”
Following the implementation of the new guest feedback standards, new protocols were implemented at the hotel, such as recurring meetings to discuss rankings, scores and opportunities for improvement.
“The most important thing that every Marriott is specifically graded on is overall satisfaction,” said Behler. “We need to score a nine or 10 for it to be a passing grade, with a 10 being an awesome, amazing stay, to a one being an extremely poor, complete failure. Anything other than a nine and 10 is basically a fail. That was a big culture and mind shift when guestVoice first rolled out. They way it used to be was a seven or below was considered a failure.
“So, scores across the entire brand reflected this change, but it’s really all about the intent to return and the intent to recommend, which is such a higher percentage with any nines and 10s that we receive,” he continued. “[We know] that those guests were truly happy with their experience and believe they are going to definitely recommend us to others.”
The guestVoice system also allowed Behler and his staff to contact guests after they provided their feedback, which enhances customer service and enables the hotel to quickly begin rectifying any problem flagged by a survey. “We are being much more responsive to [those who provide feedback]. The minute I get a survey and it is flagged at less than a nine, I can log right in, give [the guests]a call or send them an e-mail to find out what’s going on,” he said. “I also have a member of my team that helps me respond to each and every survey—either a handwritten letter or email correspondence thanking them. Of course, if it’s a failing survey, we see what we can do to get them back, and they are really shocked when they get a response from me.”
The inclusion of social media to the reports adds to the real-time dynamic of the feedback, according to Behler. “Before, it took seven to 10 days after they filled the survey out. Now, it is just a matter of seconds because we also get all of the social media feedback,” he said. “Our Facebook and Twitter feeds go into guestVoice as well, so we can see any activity that is happening, whether they are talking about our hotel in a good way or a bad way.”
—Adam Perkowsky