Service with a smile

With 290 locations in 41 states, the Hampton Inn hotel chain has grown steadily since its introduction seven years ago. The brand has found a niche in the highly competitive lodging industry, battling against both economy motel chains and mid-priced hotels by giving travelers clean, comfortable rooms at reasonable rates and little extras such as a free continental breakfast.

In a 1990 Consumer Reports article on lodging, Hampton Inn not only outscored its rivals in the economy category on overall satisfaction, it also outscored those in the moderate price range and all but one chain in the high-priced category. This level of performance has allowed Hampton Inn to offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee, which states that if a guest is dissatisfied for any reason, his or her stay at the Hampton Inn is free.

To make sure its service lives up to that guarantee, Hampton Inn uses an ongoing mail survey to monitor guest satisfaction with the service at each of its locations, says Mark Wells, vice president of marketing, Hampton Inns.

"Fundamentally we're in a service business. Our services in large part are actually provided at the time they're sold. We think being able to evaluate on a dynamic basis the guest's perception of our delivery of those services is very important. Our goal was to be able to refine the delivery of our product and service over a period of time. The survey gives us a way of understanding one, where we're good and two, where we could stand a little improvement, either on an overall basis or at individual hotels," Wells says.

Guests use a five point scale to express their satisfaction with nine components that represent each facet of a stay at a Hampton Inn: reservation, arrival, check-in, room product, grounds and facilities, staff contact, problem handling, continental breakfast, and check out.

When delivered successfully, these components make up what the company calls the Ideal Hampton Inn. "Through research we developed a set of service standards that have to do with the hard product-the bed, the bathroom-and also what guests expect from a service standpoint. If we do all of those things correctly, guests have told us that that equals not just adequate service but a high level of service. Our guest satisfaction rating system tracks performance against those attributes," Wells says.

Guests who complete the survey (over 20% of them do) give the property an overall rating, indicate how likely they are to return to a Hampton Inn and if they feel they got their money's worth. They also compare Hampton Inn to other hotels/motels they've patronized.

Sample generation

Hampton Inn's computerized reservation system is an important part of the research because it simplifies the sample generation process, says David Hughes, senior account manager, Maritz Marketing Research, a St. Louis-based research firm that has worked on the survey with Hampton Inn since its creation in 1988.

"We wanted to pull names on a random, on-going basis from each individual property. Depending on how you're set up, it can be a problem getting names from the various properties on an ongoing basis, but since Hampton had a computerized reservation system it was relatively easy for us to do that," Hughes says.

From its Memphis headquarters, Hampton Inn transmits a sample of names of recent guests at each Hampton Inn property to Maritz. Maritz then mails the surveys twice a week.

After the results are tabulated, each property receives a monthly report of the results showing its scores for the given month, a month-to-month and year-to-date comparison, and how it ranks against all other Hampton Inn properties. "At the property level, getting information like that is very important, because it's something concrete that the individual hotel general manager can look at over a period of time and say, for example, our cleaning service isn't up to par, or we're having problems with the plumbing," Wells says.

Meanwhile, Hampton Inn management receives a report on the individual properties and the system as a whole.

Quality assurance

Like most franchisers, Hampton Inn has rules of operation under which franchisees must agree to operate. These include regular visits from quality assurance inspectors who grade each property on its adherence to corporate guide lines. But, Wells says, though each location may measure up to company standards, what's most important is that it measures up to customer standards.

"If we relied, as most of our competitors do, solely on a quality assurance inspector, we could be operating to the standard that we've set and still not be meeting expectations that the guest has. Without some sort of ongoing communication process with the guest, we'd never know we were falling short of guest expectations.

"The survey results give us the customer input that we can filter back to our quality assurance people that talk to the hotel general managers. If there is a problem, the quality assurance people can work with the managers on a remedial basis to solve the problem, not because it's a policy or procedure that Hampton Inn has but because it's something that the guests have said you aren't delivering as well as you could at your hotel and it's hurting your rating and it's hurting the entire system.

"I guess we differ from other hotels in that our rules of operation for our franchisees are much more oriented to service than they are to some of the back of the house things that have traditionally been monitored. We do that, too, but because the biggest part of our product is provided in real time, it's more important for us to know what the guest thinks about our performance than it is for us to make a judgment about how well we're doing. We can certainly do that, but what counts is how well the guest thinks we've delivered."

Monthly reports

For the most part, the property owners and general managers are excited to receive their monthly reports, Maritz's David Hughes says. "If the news is not good, they are concerned' but I think they look at it as a valuable piece of feedback. The goal is to get them better, more actionable information, and get it to them more frequently. If we can do that, they're going to look at it as that much more valuable of a marketing tool."

"Fortunately, we select our licensees rather carefully," Hampton Inn's Mark Wells says, "so our property GMs and owners are interested in delivering good quality. We've spent a lot of time from a corporate culture standpoint reinforcing the bridge between our employees and our customers.

"Sometimes hotel management might not agree with their ratings, however almost invariably the ratings correlate with the business situation at the hotel and how well they adapted.

"For example, if customers at a property complained about the lack of variety in the continental breakfast, you might look at the kinds of people that were in the hotel over the last month. If they had ten different youth groups staying with them, it might have been that the kids wiped out the continental breakfast and the staff couldn't replenish it fast enough. So that is when other guests came through, they found that it was pretty picked over. If you know you're going to have a situation like that, you've got to have a couple of people staffing your breakfast so it can be replenished effectively and maintain the level of variety and quality."

Problem resolution important

Through the survey, Hampton Inn guests have told the company that the speedy resolution of problem is one of the most important service attributes. "Most guests will tell you that if they do any traveling at all, they expect problems to occur from time to time, even at the best hotels. But what's important to them is not that the problem occurred, but what's done about it and how it's handled," Wells says.

The research has shown Hampton Inn that acting quickly on guest problems is a sure way to maintain customer satisfaction. "If you compare the overall stay ratings by all guests with those who had problems, they're essentially the same-as long as the problem is solved. If a problem occurs and doesn't get handled, or worse yet, doesn't get reported so we can do anything about it, the overall ratings will go down in a rather dramatic fashion," Wells says.

Maritz's David Hughes: "If you're staying one night in a hotel and you experience a problem that isn't something that causes you to want to leave your room, chances are you're not going to report it. So there are a lot of people who may check out of your hotel and may not have had a satisfactory stay, but you don't know about it."

Uncovering unreported customer problems is one major benefit of customer satisfaction research. Product and service providers can address problems that they're aware of, but the smaller problems that don't get reported-due to customer reluctance, frustration or indifference-can be the most damaging because they go unanswered. To be able to respond to problems, you have to be aware of them.

Cleanliness critical

Another critical service attribute for Hampton Inn guests is, not surprisingly, cleanliness, and one of the first indicators of cleanliness is the hotel carpeting-in the lobby and hallways and especially the rooms, Wells says.

"Sometimes in this business you tend to look at things from an analytical standpoint, but guests really get down to the nitty gritty when you ask them what's important. They say that if the carpet is clean, fresh smelling and it looks good, they feel confident about it. They say, 'if the carpet is in good condition and clean, so I can walk barefoot on it or have my toddler crawl around on it without any fear, then I feel good about it.' "

Budgetary concerns

The survey response rate was higher in previous years when the questionnaire was sent out with a dollar incentive. But when budgetary concerns forced a rethinking of that approach, the incentive was eliminated and the survey was redesigned into a one piece form to make it easy for the respondent to complete and return the survey.

"At Maritz, we helped Hampton Inn design the mail piece in such a way that we were able to generate some cost efficiencies, making the piece inexpensive to mail while making it something that would stand out in the recipient's mail box. Because people get so many pieces of mail, we wanted to design a personalized piece that would give us the highest response rate possible while maintaining cost efficiency," Hughes says.

In previous years, the results were reported quarterly, which was fine for management from a diagnostic standpoint. But this didn't allow the quick reaction time that Hampton Inn felt was necessary, Wells says.

"We wanted a living, breathing tool that our general managers could take remedial action from. If you report results on a quarterly basis, by the time you assemble and release the information to managers the first month of the next quarter is already over, so your chance to take action and impact the rating in the next month is almost nil. Whereas if you get the feedback on a monthly basis, you can provide feedback to the employees and make the remedial changes with a lot more dispatch."