Survey Best Practices

Interstate Takes Stock in Attracting “Best in Class”

Interstate Hotels & Resorts, the largest multi-national hotel management company in the world, currently operates 200-plus hospitality properties, with more than 55,000 rooms in 41 states, the District of Columbia, Canada, and Europe. The foundation of Interstate’s business is built on four principals: exceeding guest expectations, ensuring associate satisfaction, driving revenue, and maximizing profits.

Catherine Moseley, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, joined Interstate in January 2006. She is charged with managing both internal and external human resource initiatives that include strengthening Interstate’s corporate culture, and enabling the company to attract and retain the best hospitality professionals in the industry. Moseley is also leading efforts to develop and deliver superior service standards so that Interstate Hotels & Resorts continues to meet and exceed both guests’ and owners’ high expectations.

With hospitality properties spread throughout the globe, Moseley realized the importance of adding a measurement system to get a pulse on Interstate associates and property managers, as well as hotel guests.

The senior vice president of Human Resources explained that Interstate’s culture is designed around a balanced scorecard approach to business with four quadrants: profit, revenue, guest, and associate. In order to address Interstate’s operational needs on a day-to-day basis, she and her team knew a temperature check was required to find out how divisions were doing across all properties world-wide.

In order to get a true reading on Interstate’s property managers and associates, Moseley wanted to go straight to the source. The first survey was deployed in October 2006 to all associates and property managers in the field, as well as Interstate’s corporate division.

“Our regional vice presidents need to know what’s happening in their hotels,” Moseley explained. “And they need an accurate report card delivered quickly.” She continued, “UniFocus is the best in the industry in terms of the volume of information its STAFFScope™ product provides. The detailed data, reporting features, and turnaround time to receive feedback were all excellent.”

Feedback results from the three surveys (associates, property managers, and corporate) will take place at Interstate soon. Moseley conveyed that there would be multiple meetings to discuss survey results with all participants. Human Resources will also be present at all gatherings. Moseley feels interactive, face-to-face meetings are the most effective way to communicate survey results. Next steps will include appropriate action plans reflecting feedback, and sharing best practices, with Interstate staff. Conducting associate surveys is meant to help sustain Interstate’s key principal of high employee satisfaction, which in turn helps attract “best in class” employees.

Need for Speed - PGA WEST Members Surveyed Electronically

Established in 1984, PGA WEST is home to six championship golf courses in La Quinta, California, near Palm Springs. Deemed the “Western Home of Golf in America,” PGA WEST is located on more than 2,200 acres, and has 40 tennis courts, three country clubs, pro shops, as well as state-of-the-art exercise and fitness facilities. The PGA WEST community has 1,700 members that enjoy all the sporting amenities, as well as year-round social activities.

According to John Pollis, PGA WEST Advisory Board of Governors member, retaining members is key, and bringing in new ones is also very important.

“We wanted to be more proactive in reaching out to our members,” explained Pollis. “We determined that sending out a survey electronically was best because it’s more convenient for participants to respond. This is the first time we’ve sent out a survey via e-mail.” Pollis also noted that the robust reporting capabilities and quick turnaround time to receive results were an added bonus.

Note: PGA WEST conducted a member survey in October 2006. The survey consisted of questions across all dimensions: loyalty, staff, golf areas, activities, and more. Results have been reviewed, and appropriate actions have been taken. The next member survey is scheduled for May 2007.

Guest Surveys Generate New Revenue at Peabody Hotels

In early 2006, Peabody Hotels implemented UniFocus’ GUESTScope™, guest satisfaction measurement and reporting services, across its portfolio of award-winning properties: The Peabody Orlando, The Peabody Memphis and The Peabody Little Rock.

Peabody Hotels were looking for a guest satisfaction and guest loyalty management system that provided a hard copy comment card, as well as an e-mail survey system to serve all three hotel properties, and that could be readily adapted over time. In particular, they wanted a survey system that would provide the opportunity to ask “harder” more detailed questions about Peabody Hotels’ products and services. Real time feedback and a process to respond immediately were also critical to the decision to purchase GUESTScope.

The GUESTScope feedback program used by Peabody Hotels has many innovative features including a combination of response technologies that meet the communications needs of all guest segments, provide immediate availability of survey data and comments, and allow for fast, personalized responses to each survey respondent with its template-driven response system. In implementing GUESTScope, the company has realized a significant increase in response rates over previous programs.

“UniFocus’ GUESTScope gives our management team real-time guest feedback, and because the feedback is so immediate, we are often able to recover from a potential guest disappointment even before the guest leaves the hotel,” explained Doug Browne, General Manager, The Peabody Memphis. Gregg Herning, General Manager of The Peabody Little Rock, agrees. “UniFocus has presented us with significant opportunities to build repeat business and lasting guest relationships. In our competitive markets, this is paramount to success.”

Alan C. Villaverde, CHA, Executive Vice President and General Manager of The Peabody Orlando, recognizes the value of the partnership between Peabody Hotel Group and UniFocus. “The volume of guest feedback has given us new tools to celebrate success and train for the future. We are also pleased that our use of the UniFocus guest response and recovery system has generated positive, trackable new revenue as we welcome back guests who shared details of their previous stays with us.”

The Peabody management team finds GUESTScope to be very facilitative. They like the real-time ability to generate reports and statistical analyses, as well as the wealth of available information. In addition, management can compare performance between properties and to their designated STAR segment. All managers have access to the system and can check and chart their own progress throughout the month and year, and are easily able to share this data with their operations teams.

Since implementing GUESTScope in June 2006, all three Peabody hotels have enjoyed positive scoring, and are running equally impressive favorability scores.

“We have openly embraced the Information Age with our adoption of GUESTScope,” says Andrew Whitaker, MBA, Guest Technology and Quality Assurance Manager, who manages and analyzes guest feedback for all three properties. “Clearly, harnessing the expertise of the UniFocus team, as well as the technology of 21st century guest loyalty management, has paid off handsomely for our company.”

Going Straight to the Source With Parent Satisfaction Surveys

Finding good educational child care can be a difficult and often long drawn out process. Parents often feel that making the right child care decision is one of the hardest things they have to do. Primrose Schools, based in Acworth, GA, knows that parents want the very best learning experience for their children. They also recognize the tremendous challenge this poses.

Founded in 1982, Primrose Schools understand that parents are seeking more balance between the demands of work and family life. Primrose offers child care for children six weeks to five years of age. After school programs are also available for children up to age 12.

1990 marked the opening of the fourth Primrose School and the beginning of the franchising concept. There were only a handful of franchised child care companies in the late 1980s - a period when the child care industry was dominated by independent businesses. Today, Primrose has 166 schools - 165 are franchises, the other is a corporate school. The franchisee-owner operated model provides this human connection between staff and parents is a unique approach to education, according to Bob Benowitz, Executive Vice President, Operations. Parents are able to meet with teachers and franchise owners face-to-face, affording them the opportunity to witness the benefits of Primrose’s approach to education first-hand.

“The school provides the Primrose Balanced Learning® curriculum to its students. This blends two leading philosophies of teaching young children: the child-initiated approach and the teacher-directed approach, and balances this with character development and play,” explained Benowitz.

In order to ensure its continued success and rapid growth, (Primrose is opening 20 new schools per year, and has locations in 15 states), Primrose’s management team realized it needed a cohesive way to reach its parent population to obtain feedback. They called upon UniFocus to help them conduct parent satisfaction surveys.

“We wanted to get a true read on what makes our parents happy and unhappy, with the ability to correct any shortfalls quickly,” explained Benowitz. ’Though face-to-face communication with parents is effective, requesting feedback using a survey enables them to be more truthful and less intimidated in their responses. Satisfied parents and word-of-mouth willingness to recommend Primrose, translates into increased student occupancy which in turn increases our profitability.”

The Primrose Schools’ goal is to continue to conduct two parent satisfaction surveys per year. Survey feedback will be used to develop new and innovative programs to fulfill and exceed parent expectations for the brand.