Irving, Texas � 07/16/2000 - Ever fill out one of those hotel comment cards and wonder if it was headed for the shredder?

Well, chances are if you stayed at a Hilton, Wyndham, Loews, Red Roof, Holiday Inn or any number of other hotel properties, your opinion made its way to Irving and the offices of UniFocus, where it was scanned, tallied and put into a monthly report for the hotel. Tucked away in a low-rise industrial building near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, UniFocus gauges the satisfaction of guests at more than 3,000 hotels and finds out how a half-million hotel workers feel about their jobs.

The two go hand in hand, says Mark Heymann, the 48-year-old managing partner of UniFocus.  Given today�s extraordinarily tough labor market, dissatisfied workers don�t stick around. So a happy staff is the key to happy campers.

That�s where his company comes in.

UniFocus processes well over 4 million guest-comment cards and more than 500,000 employee attitude surveys each year to pinpoint problems. The Irving-based consulting company also goes on site to find wasted time and duplicated efforts so that hotels can more effectively deploy the workers they have.

�The biggest issue on any CEO�s mind these days is labor. It�s absolutely paralyzing,� says partner John Coolidge, who adds that UniFocus helps hotels, casinos and restaurants do more with less. �We turn raw data into usable knowledge.�

AmFac Resorts uses this input to stretch its hotel, restaurant and recreational staff at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, which literally has to import and house its labor. Colonial Williamsburg uses it to enhance the town�s unique 18th-century experience while curbing 21st-century costs.

And while UniFocus� primary market is the hospitality industry, the company is beginning to venture into other areas of retail, currently handling GroceryWorks.com�s customer-experience survey done via e-mail.

Hilton surveys guests checking out of its hotels with a quick questionnaire that can be answered in 30 seconds while the final bill is being printed out. The data are used to instantly troubleshoot problems as well as track month-to-month satisfaction and loyalty trends.

�Mistakes are going to happen,� says Bill Brooks, Hilton�s vice president of brand management and performance. �The question is, how are you going to recover? Then, how quickly can you recover? And, can you recover to such an extent that you turn it into a positive event or what we call a �wow�? That�s why we do this type of work.  These guys are great.�

Response rate

Grabbing responses as people are leaving yields a higher response rate and one that�s more positively balanced than putting cards in the rooms and waiting for people to return them, Mr.  Brooks says. �Almost nobody fills them out, and of the ones who do, 97 percent are really unhappy.�

UniFocus came into the viewfinder two years ago, when three smaller hotel-consulting companies joined forces, tightening a loose alignment where they�d pooled talents to handle major projects. �But we�d lost out on landing some customers because we lacked critical mass,� says Mr.  Heymann, who�s worked with the hospitality industry since earning his degree in economics from Brown University. �We just weren�t big enough to make certain players comfortable.�

Today, the combined company is one of the nation�s largest data sources for hotels, casinos and restaurants, with revenue expected to reach almost $10 million this year.

The mammoth Opryland in Nashville, Tenn., keeps daily tabs on its 2,884 rooms and 600,000-square-foot meeting-and-exhibit complex with a just-launched, advanced system that immediately scans in guest comments.  Opryland intends to expand the system to handle its 600-seat General Jackson dinner showboat and its golf course operations.

And when the $400 million Opryland opens in Grapevine in 2003, customer feedback will be scanned in and problems kicked out every day.

�It�s enabled us to cut the response cycle. We call it a �service recovery experience,�� says Chris Tomlin, manager of training and guest satisfaction in Nashville. �We�re still in the learning stages, but we�re already seeing a return on our investment.�

Opryland surveys 10 percent of its guests at checkout each day. That will mean 2,100 responses this month, added to other customer feedback cards gathered in its restaurants and lounges. That�s a huge volume of data to be consumed, she says. UniFocus tallies the day-to-day information into digestible monthly bites that measure key satisfaction trends and compares them to industry benchmarks.

Labor 101

These days, retaining trained employees is as elusive as keeping good customers, says Ms.  Tomlin at Opryland, and every bit as important.  �It�s Labor 101, and it�s simple: There�s a shortage.�

The hospitality industry has an adage that customer satisfaction mirrors employee relations. But this idea is often treated with lip service, Mr. Heymann says, with employee opinions sought only once a year at review time, if then. 

That may not cut it in a world with far more hospitality jobs than trained people to fill them.

�Some clients are surveying employees two or three times a year with much shorter forms not focused on benefits but on communication and training,� he says. �By having more frequent surveys, we get a much better pulse of what�s going on with employees.�

UniFocus feedback indicates that money is not the key driver when it comes to holding on to staff. �It�s the interaction with management and the environment,� he says.

Often times, the trained eyes at UniFocus (most of its partners come out of the hotel industry) spot simple things that make major differences when it comes to staffing.

There�s almost a built-in excuse for poor service at the Grand Canyon. There is no nearby population center, and it�s tough to get enough workers willing to live in the company�s remote park housing.

�We went through every department, including the mule rides down the canyon, and helped them rethink what they were doing,� Mr.  Heymann says. �We were able to reduce the number of bodies needed at the park, which also reduced their housing requirements. And in the process, we were also able to deliver more consistent service.�

For example, one restaurant sits on the rim with a spectacular view of the sky and rocks. Each evening it was slammed by a crush of diners hoping to watch the sun drift below the horizon.  UniFocus� scheduling software programmed in the time of sunset (which comes very early in December and very late in June) so that extra hands were automatically on board for nature�s showtime.

�Too many organizations end up serving the customer when they�re able to serve them vs.  planning and staffing so that they can provide the service when the customer wants it,� Mr.  Heymann says.

Another problem was that people landed at the isolated canyon in early afternoon expecting to unload their stuff and then head outdoors. But check-in wasn�t until 4 p.m. �We revised the system so that the front desk knew when the rooms were clean so that we could get people into their rooms quicker. The overall satisfaction level and perception of price value improved.�

Improvements

At Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, �historic integrity� is an expensive proposition, says Ron Strecker, who uses UniFocus to survey guests and hone operations at the historical complex�s nine eating establishments, five hotels and three golf courses. �We wanted to minimize labor costs without impacting the guest experience.�

Kitchens at its four colonial taverns are located in cramped basement quarters where the working isn�t easy. �They helped us rearrange the spaces to make them more user-friendly and improve the workflow so we could make better use of the staff we had,� Mr. Strecker says.  �They help us think out of the box.�

All hotels want to create customer loyalty, but a hotel room is a commodity product, Mr.  Heymann says. �Most people could go blindfolded into a four-star hotel and wouldn�t be able to tell which hotel they were in. The way to differentiate is through level of service.�

Prefer feather pillows, need an exercise bike in your room or want your favorite beer iced-down in the mini-bar? Smart operators are moving in that direction, he says. �There�s no reason why a hotel can�t anticipate your needs and let you plug in your preferences so that when you check into that room in San Francisco or Chicago, it has exactly what you want.�

The hot issues today among business travelers are free, in-room coffee makers, two-line telephones with a data portal and reasonable telephone charges (both long-distance and local). They want 24-hour access to a fax machine and printer but don�t necessarily want them cluttering their rooms.

�What customers expect isn�t rocket science stuff,� Mr. Coolidge adds. �It�s friendliness of staff, cleanliness of the property, resolution of a problem that�s reported and having everything in the room work. If you miss one of these things, the chances of the customer coming back are slim.�

As Mr. Brooks at Hilton puts it: �If the bathroom�s not clean, you�re dead. There is no room for error when it comes to bathtubs and toilets.�

(c) 2000, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.