Is the customer always right? Take a deep dive into the world of hospitality and customer service with co-founder of the Hospitality Leadership Academy, Alec Dalton. Listen to him speak to how COVID affected the hotel business, his time working with the Disney organization, and his tips on how to create great customer experiences by building relationships between the customer and the brand.
Is the customer always right? Take a deep dive into the world of hospitality and customer service with co-founder of the Hospitality Leadership Academy, Alec Dalton. Listen to him speak to how COVID affected the hotel business, his time working with the Disney organization, and his tips on how to create great customer experiences by building relationships between the customer and the brand.
Alec Dalton [00:00:00] What I advocate for from a customer experience standpoint is, to a certain extent, under-promise and overdeliver. Set a bar that you can achieve at the very least, and then do your best to surpass it within reason.
Finn Lambouris [00:00:14] You're listening to Business Edge, the podcast for professionals looking to excel in the workforce. In each episode, our guests take a deep dive into their personal and professional experiences to give you an edge in the marketplace. This podcast is brought to you by Alpha Kappa Psi professional business fraternity.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:00:29] Welcome. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Business Edge podcast. My name is Chrissy Vasquez and today with me is Nicole Klemp. Welcome back! How are you doing?
Nicole Klemp [00:00:38] I'm well. How are you, Chrissy?
Chrissy Vasquez [00:00:40] Good. It's a freezing day here in Indianapolis. So, nice to talk- it looks like it's nice and sunny where our guest is. Alec Dalton is joining us today. Welcome.
Alec Dalton [00:00:51] Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And while sunny, I'll admit that there's plenty of snow on the ground, so don't think I get off easy here.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:00:58] Ah, OK. It looks really nice and bright and tropical. So thank you for joining us today. Can you give us a quick overview for our listeners, kind of who you are and how you got to where you are?
Alec Dalton [00:01:09] Absolutely. Well, Chrissy and Nicole, thank you again for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. My name is Alec Dalton. I'm the partner and co-founder of the Hospitality Leadership Academy. My team uses service science to help organizations understand and improve the quality of the service that they deliver in their customer services, whether we're talking about hotels or health care spaces. But before this, I spent about a decade in the hospitality industry working in a series of five luxury hotels and then spending the last six years in the global quality office at Marriott International's headquarters. I've dabbled with brands like the Ritz-Carlton and Disney and had a lot of fun along the way. But even before the hospitality career began, I was a brother in Alpha Kappa Psi. Initiated in Nu chapter at Boston University in 2011. A decade ago, my how time flies, and today I'm proud to be the chapter advisor for my home chapter, again, Nu chapter at Boston University.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:02:05] That's awesome. Thank you for your service back to the organization. That's really important.
Alec Dalton [00:02:09] Oh, it's my absolute pleasure.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:02:10] I always feel like the chapter advisor's the most important role in this organization. You just have that day to day direct impact on the students and really helping shape tomorrow's leaders. So thank you for that. I had the wonderful experience of working with a lot of the Marriott leadership with a nonprofit I was working for. I worked with Peter Cole quite a bit.
Alec Dalton [00:02:28] Oh, excellent.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:02:30] Yeah. So Marriott companies, great place to get a lot of your career in. Absolutely. I love their culture of giving and their employee culture.
Alec Dalton [00:02:39] Absolutely. That's one of the fun parts about hospitality. It's both a line of work and a way of living. And that's what my team and I try to infuse in our work with other clients.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:02:49] So your company that you started, it's anybody that touches a customer? So not just hospitality, but like you said, it could be hospitals, it could be retail? It's anybody that has that customer experience?
Alec Dalton [00:03:02] Exactly, exactly. We work with residential concierge service, so think of the doormen in the front desk staff in an apartment building. We've worked with Finnish telecommunications conglomerate. Really, anybody that has any interaction with the customer has a room to deliver great service and has capacity for hospitality. And what we do is help organizations think through their customer experience, figure out if they're delivering satisfying experiences for their customers, if they're engaging their employees along the way. And you don't just need a hotel or a restaurant to do that.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:03:35] Great.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:03:35] Awesome. Cool, so, Alec, tell us a little bit about, you know, being in the hospitality industry and you know, you know, we're going to ask this with COVID and with all of the changes we've seen over the last couple of years. Tell us a little bit about what you've seen kind of throughout the last few years and how you see things changing and evolving in your industry.
Alec Dalton [00:04:01] You can only imagine. It's been a rollercoaster ride. Fortunately, we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel getting brighter and brighter. And to a certain extent, we've already seen a lot of recovery around the world at or above the pace of room night bookings or hotel stays, even before COVID occurred in the first place. To kind of bring everybody back in time where I was in March of 2020, I was still at Marriott's headquarters at the time. We had inklings from our colleagues in the Asia-Pacific region about this thing called COVID that was infectious and affecting large parts of the population very quickly. And like many people across industries, it almost felt like overnight or just in a matter of a couple of days, right, where we became aware of the virus, we became aware of its spread in the United States and then had to go quickly into lockdowns. For Marriott looking globally, just before that happened, our worldwide occupancy rate, the percentage of hotel rooms that were full, hovered on average about 60 percent, which was normal for February, March, and overnight with lockdowns in the United States, we dropped into tens, if not single digits. It was profound, and we had to figure out, you know, what do we do? How do we take care of our associates? Priority number one, how do we make sure that our people are safe, that we can keep them employed to the greatest extent possible? And of course, how do we take care of our guests and make sure that they're safe when they're staying with us, that they feel comfortable continuing to come to us? And then how do we think about our communities too, the places where our hotels live, the places that our hotels in some sense supported? How do we think about our suppliers, our partners in the area? And it was a big challenge, but a good challenge to grapple with.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:05:49] You know, I think that, Marriott, I remember the messages from Arnie Sorenson about what Marriott was committed to doing to trying to keep as many employees employed as possible and bringing them back as soon as they could. I have to say he's a tremendous leader. I had the honor to meet him once and go on to run with him, and he is just stellar. Such a huge loss. What was that like on the inside, figuring out what's our strategy, how are we going to communicate this, you know, to move that quickly? What was that like?
Alec Dalton [00:06:23] I think Arnie's message that you saw, that many in the public saw was really indicative of the way that it was addressed within the company. And for those of you who haven't seen it, please, I encourage anybody interested in leadership to watch, Google, YouTube, Arnie Sorenson COVID, and you'll see a brief video from him, mostly geared toward associates working in the company, but released publicly so that everybody could understand the position of the organization. And it's such a masterclass in transparent communication and true leadership. That was certainly the case within the company. I remember, so I worked at headquarters at that time, and remember being invited onto a call with the rest of the global operations division. And it was shared that approximately 90, 95 percent of headquarters associates, about 4000 people were going to be placed on a temporary furlough. At that time, it was a matter of weeks or months. And our leaders were optimistic that we would return, but to preserve the business, a cash intensive business, unfortunately, that very, very difficult decision was made. And as challenging as it was to see colleagues and coworkers and mentors and friends go through that and to be a part of that alongside them, that transparent leadership, again, that communication, that honesty, was appreciated. It was respectful. It was a thoughtful- and I think again, it was to the best extent possible, optimistic without being overpromising. I was very fortunate to remain among the 10 or 5 percent that stayed working, and my role was actually focused specifically on cleanliness protocols. Helping to establish the standards for the company, particularly in the United States and Canada, across the Americas, as far as, you know, how do we deliver housekeeping service when people don't want us in their rooms? How do we make sure that when guests are coming into a hotel that they feel the place in the front office is safe? Again, how do we protect our associates? Make sure that they're safe from one another as well as from guests, from a hygienic standpoint? So we worked through a lot of that very rapidly in very dynamic, agile teams. Again, we're probably about 250 people at the time keeping the ship afloat. And as recovery happened, as we learned from peers, as we learned from other industries, as we learned from experts in public health and academia, we found a way to adapt, to pivot processes, to communicate fluidly and quickly to hotels. So if news came out about, you know, the effectiveness of masks, we were pretty early on in mandating the wearing of masks by employees and requesting it of guests even before many governments had stipulated those regulations. You know, in time, we looked at food and beverage programing to figure out how do we deliver value with, you know, classic hotel continental breakfast without being able to have a breakfast buffet? That was one of the challenges that my team and I grappled with. And again, all in summary, I suppose COVID was a test of an organization's ability to move quickly, rapidly, but to be transparent with employees and with customers all along the way so people can have an expectation and can make a decision on their own about what's best for their personal future.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:09:56] Thank you for sharing that insight. Just so many things you don't think about. I have a friend that's the general manager of the J.W. here in Indianapolis, and he was like, We've never locked the front doors before. And with COVID, we had to figure, you know, we joked "who's got the key to lock the front doors?" Because you never do that. And the H.R. manager or director and the general manager were there. One of the few staff, like you said, so reduce. They were doing all the things. So very fascinating. Thank you for sharing that.
Alec Dalton [00:10:22] Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head there. We really- there were many hotels that didn't even have locks, even if they had a key. It was a challenge. One of the other things that I thought was so fascinating and lovely was the fact that whether hotels opened or closed, you might recall very early in the pandemic, this was a trend that started to happen were hotels and high rise office buildings would essentially illuminate windows in the shape of hearts or words. We called it lights of love. But again, I think about the fact that the responsibility of an organization isn't just to their employees and their customers, but also to the communities. And even when we couldn't cater to the communities in the event a hotel was closed, we could still offer a presence. And that's so important for any hospitality company, especially to deliver a presence of welcoming and warmth.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:11:11] Mm-Hmm.
Nicole Klemp [00:11:12] Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Kind of along the same lines, but coming out of the pandemic as well, you know, Chrissy and I talked recently on an episode about the great resignation and you know, how companies are having trouble retaining and recruiting staff. And, you know, with your work in hospitality, how are you finding that situation and how are you, you know, the companies that you're working with, how are they, you know, keeping employees engaged, keeping them, you know, around and recruiting in new talent as things open back up?
Alec Dalton [00:11:49] I'll give you an interesting take as a product of the great resignation myself. So I left the Marriott organization just two months ago and dove off into my own business with two fantastic partners and many colleagues that we work actively with through the Hospitality Leadership Academy. And for me, I think in talking about the great resignation, there are so many different factors that can contribute to why an employee might leave an organization. You know, we've certainly seen in the press, challenges with people preferring to work from home, for example, or to have more flexibility, I suppose more generally speaking. Some people have seen colleagues move around and realize that there may be opportunities for them to get more worth in terms of pay or compensation or benefits. Many have relocated closer to where their hometowns were because of the flexibility of COVID and don't desire to return to where they originated from. That was part of my case, actually. I had worked and lived for many years in Washington, D.C., but I spent a lot of COVID at home in Rhode Island, very close and appreciating closeness to family and friends back home. And that's where I'm calling from right now. So I think there are variety of reasons. In my personal case, it was a desire to grow as I saw more and more people embrace the gig economy. And seeing so many companies grapple with customer experience challenges amidst COVID and having a sense of how to help them fix it made it fairly smooth for me and my teammates to venture out and find organizations that we could partner with and collaborate with so that they could think through their own responses. To any leaders on this call who are looking for any tips on how to retain their talents, I honestly think, and this might sound oversimplified, but I honestly think the best thing that you can do is you can listen and you can ask questions. Figure out what is it that has kept your employees there as long as they've been around. Ask them openly what aspects of their role fulfill them and bring them engagement and ask which don't. Be transparent about these conversations. Be open, I think. Be vulnerable. It's so easy for, and I think sometimes it might feel necessary for leaders to avoid that vulnerability to kind of keep, you know, a line between personal and professional in their own relations with their employees. But it's OK for a leader to admit to their own challenges as well to let employees know that we're kind of all in this together, figuring it out together. But in listening, in hearing, we can then figure out the best responses. And like, I kind of teed up my answer this question about how the great resignation varies person to person, so too are the solutions. There's not a cookie cutter fix. It can be challenging for leaders to recognize that, but it's necessary in order to to, I think, grow as leaders and to deliver greater employee experiences.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:14:47] Thanks for sharing. I think it's important to remember that simple simplicity, right? Don't we try to over-engineer everything it seems like lately?
Alec Dalton [00:14:54] Right, exactly.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:14:55] You know, just a simple conversation.
Nicole Klemp [00:14:57] Just listening.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:14:58] Yeah, listening and sharing too. Some of my favorite conversations with some of my bosses have been when they're vulnerable about, "Here's things that I struggle with and here's things that I enjoy." It's really helpful. So, the customer's always right. That's a phrase that so many of us have heard over the years. And I was actually just in a conversation a couple of weeks ago where people were saying they felt like that was kind of an outdated phrase, especially with social media and people being able to go to the masses to blast companies.
Alec Dalton [00:15:28] Right.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:15:29] What's your thought on that? And especially with the hospitality services that you're providing to your clients, what's your take on that?
Alec Dalton [00:15:35] That's a great question, and I'm going to provoke some controversy amongst my colleagues in customer experience. It's an important phrase, and I don't think that phrase should ever be lost, that the customer's always right, and at the risk of being anecdotal about it, I wonder if a better phrase might simply be that we can't let the customer know that they're wrong, even when they're not right. And so what I mean by that is... Let me see if I can find a good example off the top of my head. You know, even coming from the hotel business, there are plenty of times where guests or members of our loyalty program might come to a hotel, and one of the benefits that's common in the more senior statuses of loyalty is a complimentary upgrade. And in all of the terms and conditions, you'll find that that upgrade is never guaranteed. It's always upon availability, and there may be even further restrictions, depending on the type of hotel or location. But that said, just because it may not be guaranteed doesn't mean that organizations don't sometimes create an expectation that it could be fulfilled. Maybe a guest has consistently received it, and so they become conditioned to expect it. Or maybe they're traveling for a very particular trip purpose, maybe during business trips, they don't really care about an upgrade. They're in the room to, you know, work and sleep in between meetings. But when it's time for a vacation at a resort destination with their family, they want to wow them, they want to be the superhero, so we say. And so an upgrade would really come in handy there. As nice as it can be to get those upgrades, it's it's not like a hotel has infinite upgrades. A hotel doesn't have infinite rooms, certainly not infinite suites or garden views. So I think in cases like that, again, one of the huge lessons from COVID is about the transparency that needs to happen in communications. And that's not just about what we've already talked about so far between leaders and employees, but also between companies and their customers, and it's setting expectations. And what I advocate for from a customer experience standpoint is, to a certain extent, under-promise and overdeliver. Set a bar that you can achieve at the very least and then do your best to surpass it within reason. But be realistic with customers, too, if their expectations are above what you can provide and as early as possible, level set those expectations so the customer doesn't get disappointed and so it doesn't cost the business in their loyalty and in their word of mouth.
Nicole Klemp [00:18:02] It's like Disney, right? Like the extra magic. You know, that they kind of sprinkle on when you don't expect it. I recently came from a trip to Disney, and, you know, I definitely felt that that was something that they put in.
Alec Dalton [00:18:15] Absolutely, absolutely. And the other thing too, that's important along those lines, as a former Disney cast member myself is finding those micro moments where you can wow a customer. I think too often in literature about customer experience, we read about these incredible wow stories. Thousands of dollars being spent to delight a customer, and there's a time and a place for those. But some of the most engaging moments are those when an employee takes an act to learn about and listen to a customer, build a relationship between the employee and the customer. That, in turn, builds a relationship between the customer and the brand, and it brings the employee closer into the brand. And it doesn't have to be extravagant. You know, if you were walking down Main Street USA in Disney World and you notice as a cast member that a little girl is very excited for the parade, why not give her a balloon to celebrate? What does a balloon cost? A couple of dollars? You don't want to give away every balloon that the company has, and nor can you, you know, do that for every guest, every single time. But if you can seize a moment to do a surprise and delight, you've won over that child, you've probably won over their parent, and all that adds up to the brand reputation.
Nicole Klemp [00:19:31] So I have to follow up now. Tell us about being a cast member and what you did.
Alec Dalton [00:19:35] Oh, it was magical. You'll have to pardon all the puns that I'm about to drop. So I spent about a year and a half, two years with the Disney organization. The first six months were actually while I was in college as part of Disney's College Program. For students listening, I highly recommend you explore the Disney College Program, as well as Disney's professional programs and internships. It's a fantastic organization, a leading brand, and one with a tremendous focus on training and development. A great boost to your resume. Incidentally, my second job with Disney was on the recruiting team, so you see, I haven't lost my passion.
Nicole Klemp [00:20:11] You've got the pitch down.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:20:11] I couldn't tell.
Alec Dalton [00:20:12] Yeah, but when I was a concierge down at Walt Disney World in Orlando, I was at the Grand Floridian, the flagship resort, and I had two line items on my job description. Numbrer one was talk about Disney all day and help guests understand how to best enjoy a Disney World vacation. And then the second item was really again, pardon the pun, but really to make magic happen. To find those moments where I could surprise and delight guests at any chance I got. And it was, I think, meaningful not just because the organization had so much training in place. They empowered me to do great work because I had the tools and resources and training. But there was so much leadership support as well that held us accountable for delivering those wow moments. We actively celebrated during daily line ups. In the stand up meeting before a shift, we celebrated mentions from guests. If a guest sent a note to Disney Central email box or tweeted about an employee or said something to a manager about a cast member's performance, we celebrated that together. We talked about Disney's values. And any time somebody was celebrated or they were observed by a cast member working alongside them. We spoke in terms of the company's language. Disney has an order of operations called the five key basics. It's kind of the values you think about when you're making a decision safety, courtesy, inclusion, show, and efficiency. And again, any time we were recognized, anytime we did good work, we were praised because we put on a great show, because we were safe, or because we were inclusive in the act of doing that. So a really fun environment to work in. Certainly made a lot of magical memories. Got to enjoy free access to the theme parks in my off hours and and it was a great early start in my hospitality career.
Nicole Klemp [00:22:03] Oh, I love that.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:22:04] I love how passionate you are about the customer experience, customer service and hospitality, that's really awesome. And I love that you're taking your passion into your own company. So we have two questions as we wrap up. The first one would be how did you know, you mentioned that you were a part of the great resignation and we've talked about that in several episodes. How did you know, "It's time?" How did you feel comfortable making that big leap?
Alec Dalton [00:22:29] So there were a couple of factors in play. One was the fact that I had had the consultancy operating as a side hustle for about a year and a half since the very beginning of COVID. My team founded it in some respects because we saw our colleagues across the industry, both of my partners are also in hospitality, one professor and the other a practicing professional. And we saw so many of our colleagues go through furloughs and layoffs and things like that, and I think rightfully wanted to make sure that we were protected in our own right. And then, like I already shared, we also saw this huge opportunity to help organizations with the skill sets that we bring to the table. And after about a year and a half, I felt comfortable with the state that my team at Marriott was in. We had recovered many of the global quality programs that help the rest of the broader organization think about how it delivers great guest experiences. I had spent a lot of time over the preceding months working very closely with a group of individuals and making sure that I developed their talents and passed on my knowledge to them so it wouldn't be a cold turkey cut off. And with the holidays, with, again, movement, with COVID being able to come back to Rhode Island, I felt like now was just as good a time as any, you know, I might as well enjoy the holidays and start 2022 on the right foot.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:23:57] Great. Thank you. That's awesome.
Nicole Klemp [00:23:58] Congrats, that's awesome.
Alec Dalton [00:24:00] Thank you. Thank you.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:24:01] So we're going to ask you our signature question here on the Business Edge podcast. Tell us about a time your personal values were challenged. What happened and how did you handle it?
Alec Dalton [00:24:09] Ooh, that is a good signature question. I think back to two times when I was working in hotel operations, and this actually, you know, we're going to do a little bit of a full circle here and talk about when the guest isn't necessarily right, but not necessarily wrong. I spent many years working in front desk positions or as concierge, food and beverage, interacting directly with customers, and in a luxury environment, there were certainly opportunities where guests had high expectations and sometimes they weren't always the most legal, ethical or moral. I think in those circumstances, I won't give any details, but I think in those circumstances, it is so critically important to retain integrity to understand not only your own personal ethics, but the ethics of the companies that you work for and to embody those and to recognize there are times where you need to draw a line in the sand and express to a customer that you know, "Unfortunately, that service is not within the range of what we can offer. But, you know, if there are other ways that we can accommodate them so that they can enjoy their stay, well, we'll certainly think about other things." You know, it's about being diplomatic. But it all goes back to ethics, integrity. Find an organization whose values match yours, so it makes it all the easier, right? And know your own values and your own worth as well.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:25:38] Oh, that's such great advice. I think there's been a couple of times where I've made some exits from situations, and it's because the values of myself and the organization either didn't align or the organization wasn't necessarily following its own values. So I think that's really great advice.
Nicole Klemp [00:25:53] Yeah, absolutely. If you can find that place where your values align with the company's, you don't feel like you have to make decisions that you wouldn't normally make. That's a perfect, perfect fit.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:26:03] Yeah. Oh, it's been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to meet with us.
Alec Dalton [00:26:11] Oh, my pleasure. Chrissy, Nicole, thank you very much for being such gracious hosts. It's great to connect with you, and I hope that the audience listening in will also enjoy the conversation that we've just had as much as we've enjoyed talking.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:26:22] Absolutely. If people want to find out more about your academy, where can they do that?
Alec Dalton [00:26:27] Can go to a couple of different places. You can start with my name and Google AlecDalton.com, or you can go straight to the source at HospitalityLeadershipAcademy.org. And I'm all over LinkedIn, so you can also search for me and my team there and always delighted to connect with listeners and certainly with Alpha Kappa Psi brothers.
Chrissy Vasquez [00:26:45] Thank you so much.
Nicole Klemp [00:26:46] Yes. Thanks so much, Alec.
Finn Lambouris [00:26:51] Thanks for listening to Business Edge. If you have questions, comments, or topics suggestions for us, email Businessedge@akpsi.org.