Page 56 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 1: DEFINE AND REFINE
The 20 Basics provide clear messages in areas such as staff
empowerment and personalized guest service, with staff encour-
aged to break away from their regular duties to address and
resolve guest issues and identify and record guest preferences.
The guidelines reflect the need for detailed, uncompromising
attention to cleanliness and the importance of the personal ap-
pearance of staff. The 20 Basics further address standards for
complaint management, communication style, etiquette, and
even stewardship of corporate assets.
While future chapters will take a deeper look at the impor-
tance of these 20 Basics for creating staff autonomy and the pro-
duction of memorable guest experiences, it should be pointed
out that Ritz-Carlton leadership began to realize that the 20
Basics, if adhered to without creativity, could detract from over-
all guest satisfaction and fall out of step with the changing needs
of the modern guest. Founder Ed Staros explains, “We originally
created the 20 Basics to ensure operational consistency. The 20
Basics were never meant to become a script for delivering service;
however, people gravitated to the guidelines and started using
parts of the 20 Basics as if they were scripts, often not varying
their choice of the phrase ‘my pleasure.’ Of course, ‘my pleasure’
was just an example. Staff needed to use all of the 20 Basics with
discretion. But when it came to ‘my pleasure,’ it certainly be-
came overused, as if it were the official script of our Ladies and
Gentlemen.”
In addition to the overuse of the term “my pleasure,” some
staff members apparently felt so compelled to“escort guests rather
than pointing out directions to another area of the hotel” that
they ignored cues from the guest that such an escort was not de-
sired. Whether it was following a guest to a bathroom or ignor-
ing his or her verbal opposition to be escorted, it became clear
that the 20 Basics needed to be refined into something that en-
couraged staff members to use their judgment as they performed
beyond the guidelines. The result of that refinement process was
titled “Service Values” (discussed in detail in Chapter 3), and it

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