Here is a short checklist for how to create a culture of extreme Guest Experience focus.

1.    Create a Guest Experience vision. Much like creating a vision statement to direct the organization, you should also create a clear and compelling “Guest Experience vision” that describes the level of service your organization aspires to deliver.

2.    Infuse your entire organization with the Guest Experience journey. Create strong, trusting relationships with your Guests. Solicit feedback, communicate that feedback throughout the entire organization, and then be sure to take action on the feedback your Guests have given you.

3.    Become an expert on delivering superior Guest Experiences. Find out everything you can about how to deliver a great Guest Experience. Steal the best ideas, benchmark against the top performers, share that information across your organization and make learning about and working on improving Guest Experience a core competency of your organization.

4.    Turn every team member into a Guest Experience champion. Make serving the Guest the number one job of every team member in your organization.  Help them with the tools, training, equipment and support they must have to deliver excellence consistently.  Reward and praise those who deliver above and beyond the call of duty, deal quickly and effectively with anyone who does not embrace the Guest Experience values.

5.    Remove any barrier that stands in the way of delivering superior Guest Experiences. Look at all systems, policies, procedures, reports and rules. Wipe out anything that creates roadblocks or frustrations in the effort to delight and amaze the Guest.  Stupid rules that make it hard for team members to serve superbly impact your organization negatively.

6.    Measure, measure, measure, measure, measure & communicate. Create a clear, specific and extremely well thought out and over-communicated program for systematically collecting and quickly communicating the most important Guest Experience delivery measurements to the people who can then act on them.  Make it easy for your people to win.

7.    Walk the talk. Every level of the organization, starting at the very top, MUST be a living example of your Guest Experience strategy.  If the senior leadership team in your organization does not support and demonstrate the critical importance of Guest Experiences, there is absolutely no hope that your front-line people will deliver great Guest Experiences. All team members must demonstrate an obsession for delivering consistently Guest Experiences.

What would have to change in your organization to create a culture of extreme Guest Experience focus?

What are you waiting for?

Adapted from Awesomely Simple by John Spence