Multiple corporate cultures in the same business

   I had an interesting experience regarding corporate culture last week. I flew to London with a colleague to attend a meeting. We checked into our hotel near Heathrow. The people on reception were pleasant. It was a fairly standard experience.

   We had dinner in the hotel bar and straight away both of us noticed that the service was out of the ordinary. Staff serving here were attentive without fawning. They were tuned into the customer experience and they were tuned into selling more for the hotel without being high pressure. For example when we ordered food our attention was drawn to a page offering nibbles such as olives and dips which it was gently suggested we might enjoy while waiting for our main course – It worked, we bought!  When we asked for a jug of water a waiter returned with two glasses apologising that they didn’t have any jugs behind the bar but that they would top up our water glasses – and they did. Our take was they’ve had good training and they’re applying it.

   We mentioned the great service the next day at our meeting in the same hotel. We set up our colleagues for a disappointment. The expectation that coffee would be served in the room turned out to be wrong. There was a coffee station nearby but we hadn’t been told that this was for us. The first batch of coffee left there was cold. The milk ran out. We ran out of water. The phone in the room didn’t work so we couldn’t call anyone. When I went looking for a staff member I couldn’t find anyone in the conference section. When I finally stopped a member of staff as he ran past me near reception he argued with me telling me there was someone looking after the conference section. We couldn’t believe we were in the same hotel.

   So what was going on here? How could staff in the same hotel give such entirely different experiences to their customers? I reckon there are a few possible answers to that question:

1. Staff in the bar area had been trained and the others hadn’t.
2. All staff had been trained but those in the bar area had a good manager who set themselves up as a role model and carried out coaching on the basis of the training given so that the desired behaviour became ingrained. The opposite was true of the conference area.
3. The bar area was well staffed and the conference area poorly staffed. This is possible as there were a number of staff on duty in the bar area but seemed to be no-one with responsibility for the conference area. However I think we’ve all seen examples of staffing up being a disaster as individuals are then not busy enough and don’t get work done. This was a different experience. They really all wanted to do a great job.

   So what’s the lesson here? Just because things are going really well in one area of the business don’t assume it’s the same in all and different managers can make a big difference to the end result.
 

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