“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 experiences they have as 'bland and uneventful.' Another frequently cited statistic from the book How to Win Customers and Keep them for Life by Michael Le Boeuf, Ph.D., is that 68 percent of customers quit doing business with a company because of perceived indifference toward them as a customer.
My programs are aimed at creating authentic enthusiasm for the customer one experience at a time. Management audiences will leave inspired to cascade the lessons to their staff, who will in turn reflect the enthusiasm in their service interactions with customers on the front lines.
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 identify resources and implement specific 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 2,000 hotels.
Since 1992, Steve has facilitated interactive and engaging training classes on three continents, in six countries, and 26 states. Steve has presented more than 500 training classes to over 12,000 people.
In addition to Marriott audiences, Steve has presented to audiences as diverse as the Northern Ireland Quality Council, The Broker Restaurants, Christian Book & Gift Stores, 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.