Insights on hospitality leadership, customer service excellence, and creating exceptional experiences from Larry Stuart's Forbes contributor series.
June 19, 2019
If you run a service organization you know that great service has three measurable components, three legs that the process stands on (or doesn't). If we are doing world class work, we are constantly asking ourselves how do we stack up internally, externally and in comparison to others in our industry? Let's take a look at how best to do that...
Read on ForbesMay 20, 2019
Whether we're running the Ritz Carlton or La Quinta Inns & Suites, working at Ruth's Chris or Chick-fil-A, our ability or lack thereof to deliver world-class hospitality will drive our business higher or run it into the ground. Whether we're serving the well-off or the working man or woman, our genuine guest service needs to be exceptional, over the top. Getting the client to return and bring his friends back with him or shout her praises via Facebook and Twitter is the ultimate goal. The only way to achieve that goal is to weave great hospitality into every nook and cranny of our business relationships, from the sanitation engineer to the CEO.
Read on ForbesApril 22, 2019
In my almost four decades of work with iconic brands like The Walt Disney World Dolphin and Loews Hotels, I saw undeniable patterns. These organizations and others like them that we revere have, on purpose, baked in the ingredients of kindness and trust into their customer service process. These two ingredients have to be there for them to continue to elate their clients and those they serve...
Read on ForbesApril 12, 2019
It has been well said that if you can measure it, you can manage it. I have found that to be true. And, everything can be measured. Everything...
Read on ForbesMarch 6, 2019
Sometimes two seemingly divergent attributes can combine to produce something exceptional. In the world of great customer service, humility and strength do exactly that...
Read on ForbesFebruary 20, 2019
Herb Kelleher passed away a few weeks ago, and it is a significant loss to those of us who knew him. There was a magic about what he did as founder and CEO at Southwest Airlines. But he would be the first to tell you that what they have done there can be replicated anywhere. It starts at the top, with a leader who hires the right people people and then lets them be who they are...
Read on ForbesFebruary 12, 2019
When Doug Conant became CEO of Campbell's Soup in 2001, he found a company with low employee engagement and an iconic organization that was leaking oil in a big way. One of his first acts as CEO was to bring in the Gallup Organization to measure employee engagement. The scores were shocking. They were, at the time, the lowest engagement scores Gallup had ever tallied...
Read on Forbes