“People do not wake up in the morning and say, 'Great! I'm going to deliver some really poor or bland experiences today.' However, the reality is that 'we are where we are.'”
– From the book Building Great Customer Experiences
by Colin Shaw and John Ivens.
So that's the rub. On the one hand, industrial psychology tells us that employees inherently want to perform well and take pride in their work. On the other hand, “we are where we are."
According to research by Beyond Philosophy, a customer experience consulting firm, 44 percent of consumers described the majority of customer service experiences they have as "bland and uneventful."
In his perenial book How to Win Customers and Keep them for Life,author Michael Le Boeuf, Ph.D., states that 68 percent of customers quit doing business with a company because of perceived indifference toward them as a customer.
My programs and keynotes contain the message that transactional service that is process-focused is unacceptable and that employees and their companies will succeed to the extent that their customer service is personalized and customer-focused!
Expertise
Steve has 20 years of experience between hotel operations, sales and marketing, training and development, and customer service roles working for Marriott International, one of the premiere customer-focused companies in the world.
As the Area Director of Training for the New York City market, Steve organized the training efforts at more than a dozen area hotels to successfully coordinate corporate-wide training initiatives. While at the NY Marriott Marquis, Steve worked with a team of Marriott executives to implement training that resulted in dramatic increases in employee and customer satisfaction scores. One such initiative titled The Basics was adapted from the Ritz-Carlton Gold Standards in 1998 and branded by Marriott headquarters to become a company-wide initiative involving more than 3,000 hotels.
Since 1992, Steve has delivered interactive and engaging presentations on three continents, in six countries, and 26 states. Steve has delivered over 600 presentations to more than 20,000 people.
In addition to Marriott International, Steve has presented to leading hospitality management companies including: White Lodging, Destination Hotels & Resorts, Richfield Hospitality, Sunburst Hospitality, North Central Group, Townhouse Inns of Montana, and Millennium Hotels & Resorts—and an array of diverse audiences including the Cherry Creek Shopping Center, Parkview Medical Center, Denver Center Alliance, Northern Ireland Quality Council, The Egg & I Restaurants, The Broker Restaurants, Development Counsellors International (PR), the National Electrical Contractors Association, and his alma mater, the University of Kansas.
Steve has received advanced training in public speaking from Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, National Speakers Association, American Society for Training and Development, and Decker Communications. In the area of instructional design methodology, Steve has received graduate-level certifications from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Steve also has received numerous certifications in the fields of employment law, personal effectiveness (Masters-level certification in Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People), and the behavioral sciences (DiSC Behavioral Style Indicator and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator certifications). Steve is an accredited member of the National Speakers Association.
Steve travels from his home in Denver, CO.
