Our lesson began by watching the daily line-up take place in the offices. The daily line-up occurs at all 90 Ritz properties around the world each day. Around the world, the same topic is discussed at each line-up, giving the staff as culture of unity. At Tuesday's line-up, the leader shared a series of advertisements, similar to the one below, that Ritz-Carlton has used in various mediums. Rather than focus on specific properties, the ads feature beautiful pictures along with a story featuring an example of extraordinary service. These ads show how service is central to the Ritz-Carlton's brand identity.
One "golden nugget", as Diana referred to them, that I found most interesting is how Ritz-Carlton empowers each of their employees to solve problems. Each employee is allowed to spend up to $2,000 per guest, per day to fix an issue a guest may have. Empowering employees with this program has two very important benefits. First, employees feel empowered, feel more connected to the company, and feel their role is important as they have discretion over a very large amount of money. Secondly, the quicker a problem can be solved, the less it ends up costing the Ritz-Carlton. In her lecture, Diana said that when a problem can be solved by the first person the guest presents the problem to, it can cost an average of $25 to fix the issue. However, once the problem moves through 3 employees, it will cost Ritz-Carlton nearly $200 on average to remedy the issue. The lesson from this is two fold: empowering employees gives them a sense of importance and ties them closer to the company, and fixing problems quickly is good for the bottom line.
Overall, the experience at the Ritz-Carlton provided us with lessons that will be extremely valuable no matter which industry we choose to work in. I highly recommend reading The New Gold Standard which provides a great overview of how the Ritz-Carlton manages to continue providing great service as they expand across the world.
--Zack Harris
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