Transcript
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Speaker: All the details are in the description. Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box about how work works.
Speaker: with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone. I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. In this episode of The Independent Minds, Geoffrey Toffetti, the CEO of Frontline Performance Group, which he tells me is the world leader in transforming incremental revenue in the hospitality industry.
Speaker: And I are going to be discussing the role training plays in that revenue transformation. Goffrey is based in Orlando, Florida in the United States of America. And like lots of British people, I have been very much up and down type of trip, roller coasters.
Speaker: But if I get the chance to visit again, i will make my travel arrangements at the Ultimate Travel Club because that is where I get trade prices on trains, lights, hotels, cruises, all sorts of travel related purchases.
Speaker: That means i save a lot of money. You can do the same by using the link in the description, which has a built-in discount on membership fees. So just like me, you can travel at trade prices.
Speaker: Now that I have paid the rent, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading, and subscribing to. Very importantly, on The Independent Minds, we do not tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
Speaker: Hello, Joffrey. Hello, great to be with you. I'm very pleased that you are with us because one of the things that people who have been involved in commercial training or in-house training, training in a workplace, are always interested in is the return on the investment in that training.
Speaker: And it is always so very difficult to demonstrate. But you have done it very clearly and I'm looking forward to finding out more about it. But before we do that,
Speaker: Please could we start by you just telling us a little bit about your career and how you ended up doing what you're doing today. Sure, it'd be my pleasure. As you mentioned, my name is Geoffrey Tafeti. I live in Orlando, Florida with my wife and two sons. One is 21, one is almost 18. So that that part of the job is almost over.
Speaker: Yeah, i started... Never over now. Yeah, I know. It's never, ever over. Yeah, I i just meant the childhood part. Oh, the childhood part. yeah Oh, yeah. I know it's never over. Yeah, the cheapest part. Yeah.
Speaker: So, so I started my career. I say started my career. I had a bunch of jobs, but my first real job was in a hotel. I started as a valet and and worked my way through the front of the house all the way up to director of guest services. And so I had like this hospitality DNA in me where I had been trained formally by, you know, former Ritz Carlton trainers that were running that hotel. And um so I had that sort of deep rooted service mentality. And then I left the industry and went into a startup. Before you go, can we just explain that Ritz Carlton?
Speaker: is a luxury hotel brand. Yes, absolutely. Ritz Carlton is, it at the time, was the luxury hotel brand. It's now got some stiff competition, but they had a very strong service ethos. And the leadership at the hotel where I work had all moved from a Ritz Carlton to this privately held hotel.
Speaker: And they brought the entire Ritz Carlton service philosophy with them. And so I was indoctrinated over a period of years into that mindset, which is very refined view on how to serve others. and And so when I left the hotel industry, I went and joined a startup in in the web boom of the end of 1999, early 2000. And as soon as I joined, the bubble burst and you know we had a big recession So I learned a lot about startups and technology that I was able to combine with my service background. And I stayed with that company for 11 years and we grew it to be one of the largest companies in our industry. I won't bore you with it because it's kind of a boring industry, but we were in procurement outsourcing, but we were one of the largest in the game. And I saw I saw it go from pre-revenue to you know billions in revenue.
Speaker: And then we sold that company. yeah it was it was I always say I got my MBA working there because um i i got to do pretty much everything you can do in a business. And I ended up in in a role where I was helping to define the strategic you know roadmap of the business. I reported to the CEO and then we sold that company.
Speaker: and um And I met the founder of the company I work for now, Frontline Performance Group. He was looking for someone to join the business who could scale it and could take us to and a new vertical. He was concentrated in automotive. both car dealerships and car rental. And with my hotel background, i kind of put all the dots together, everything I'd learned in in that startup company that did so well, everything I learned in hospitality and kind of brought those things together here at FPG.
Speaker: And we were able to, you know, open the hotel vertical. It is now 80% of our business. We work with about 3000 hotels worldwide in 125-ish countries.
Speaker: ah And we have developed a technology platform along the way. We started out as training and consulting. When I arrived, we were very much a training and consulting company. um But we built technology to enable that, to become tech-enabled, as they say.
Speaker: And then during COVID-19, The only path to survival was to pivot to technology first, which is what we did. And we emerged from COVID with a a new identity, a new business model. and And since then, it's been going extremely well because we're able to help more. We are able to scale to a whole nother level and support more clients with what we do. a big portion of what we do involves training, which I'm very happy to dig into as we go along.
Speaker: And so, yeah, i started I started at a senior level with the company, but got promoted to CEO in April of 2021, right in the middle of the COVID crisis. a Great time to be promoted. But I think it was because with the pivot to technology, that is something that we had done at my prior company, something that I know more about than the founder. And he thought now is the time to maybe hand the reins over to someone who can take us in that direction. He's still very involved. He's our chairman. I still talk to him regularly.
Speaker: um And he guides us through certain aspects of the business. And I guide the business, you know, commercially. So it's been a really strong partnership. It sounds like ah an ideal situation to be in, in a new organization almost because you reinvented yourself and a chairman who,
Speaker: sees the opportunity of allowing someone with different experiences to them to actually lead that through and then take on a different role. So we talk a lot about founders who don't evolve their own role alongside the role of the business. So congratulations on being in that type of environment.
Speaker: Yeah, it is rare that a founder can give up control without selling the company. um It's a you know big kudos to him for that. And he stays involved where his strengths lie and he lets me do what I do where my strengths lie. And together we've we've built a great company and we're continuing to grow it and innovate it. It's been very exciting.
Speaker: Yeah. Of course you wouldn't expect anything else from an organization that has been set up by people who are interested in and involved in training. It's on the outcomes of providing training is that you have, you develop other people to take on your job so that you can then do another job, right? And it all fits together. But the training that Frontline provides is almost the clues in the name, isn't it? It's the frontline people within the hospitality industry.
Speaker: Yeah, that's correct. we're We've always exclusively focused on developing front the performance capabilities of frontline teams in a number of industries, but now we're we're pretty much solely focused on hotels and restaurants.
Speaker: Right. And the frontline people are everyone that you meet from the time you arrive at the door or in some hotels, luxury hotels, when they get off your plane, go to a car, and that car is associated with the hotel, and they take you to the hotel.
Speaker: That's the frontline worker. And everyone else that you meet, receptionists, hotel cleaners, housekeeping, waiters, concierge, valets, all of those types of jobs, those are all the frontline people.
Speaker: Yep. we The way we describe it is anyone interacting with the guest. And we do focus where revenue is in play. So we we tend to spend most of our time at the front desk or at the restaurant, in some cases in the spa, where you're interacting and serving the guest, but you're also there to enhance their experience. And and that usually comes with some additional revenue. And that's where the sales service and sales skills become so important because you don't want to you don't want to be come across icky or pushy. You don't want to make people uncomfortable. You want them to feel served. And when people feel served, they tend to spend more money because you're you're buying a better experience.
Speaker: Okay. I mean this in the best possible way, but I think I got a lot of trainer speak there. Let's break it down into everyday language. Sure. Please. What you're talking about is that every interaction that a hotel guest has with frontline staff in particular parts of the hotel there is a hospitality chance, an opportunity to to enhance the hospitality that they expect that the guest experiences, but also an opportunity for the guest to enhance it further by spending additional money on some form of service.
Speaker: So what sort of situations would that look like in when you're actually in a hotel? From the point that you get to reception, what would the the sort of things that the receptionist would do in order to do what you just talked about, enhance it by selling something?
Speaker: Sure. When people, when you're checking in at a hotel, particularly full service or luxury hotels, the front desk agent has a routine that they're supposed to go through, you know, kind of a script. And in there, it there's something called rapport building. They're supposed to say, how are you today? How was your trip? You know, build a little bit of small talk into the diet into the exchange. And what we do is we teach them to use that that opportunity to find out information, that you know ah would allow them to enhance the guest experience. So as an example, let's say that you're checking into a hotel and you're a married couple and you have a teenager with you and one of the people goes up to the counter and the other two go and wander around the hotel. There's no way for the front desk agent to know that there's actually three adult sized humans that are gonna be in that room.
Speaker: And maybe you only booked a small room, because online it was the best ah best rate you could find. Well, we train them to ask, who are you traveling with? Are you traveling alone are you with a group? And when they saw him with my wife and our teenage son, now as a front desk agent, you've been trained to say, okay, the room they've booked is a little bit tight.
Speaker: We have bigger rooms available. So what I'm going to say is, you know, based on the fact that you're here with a teenager, we do have a junior suite available, which would allow you a little bit of separation in the evening, some privacy. You could both have, and you could have two bathrooms.
Speaker: In that way, i have offered you an alternative, but I haven't asked you if you want it. Where the sales stuff and the service stuff tend to get muddled is when it feels salesy is when people are asking you a direct question, because then you feel pressured.
Speaker: If I say something like, we have a suite available, we'd have an extra bathroom, I haven't asked you anything. I'm um i i' so putting it out there into the world so you can consider it. um And then you can anticipate how that person will respond. There's only so many possible responses. And you can train that. You can train them on if they say, you know, how much does it cost? Or they say, i have to go talk to my spouse. Or they say, you know, I'm not sure right now.
Speaker: All of those things, you can train them to respond. So it becomes a very fluid, natural conversation. Another really simple example, business travelers will understand this very well. You you arrive at a hotel, you're there for one night, your flight is at 5pm the next day and your meeting is at noon.
Speaker: It's really inconvenient to check out of the hotel, lug your luggage around, go to your meeting, and then have to go to the airport three or four hours early. If someone asked you on arrival, what you i see you're checking out tomorrow, what time do you depart? And you say, my flight's at six. And they say, well, do you have meetings? Yes, at noon.
Speaker: Well, why don't I get you a late checkout so you can leave your baggage here, come back, refresh yourself, and then go to the airport? That's serving them. But at the same time, if they say yes, it's going to cost a little bit of money.
Speaker: So those are just some simple examples on where that might occur and how that might occur. Yes. You've reminded me, having been a business traveler for a long time, that my most recent hotel stay was in four-star, upper four-star hotel, quite close to Houses of Parliament in London.
Speaker: And I was there. and there were all sorts of people coming at and at various different times and we agreed not to worry about eating together so I was going to eat alone and I thought I'll have something in my room the men the menu in the room was out of date so I couldn't look at and then it became ah got to start it just got very complicated and it got complicated and frustrating because when I checked in I wasn't asked by the person checking me in
Speaker: whether I would be dining in the hotel tonight, whether I would want to have a drink in the bar. And they didn't explain that the process was that if I wanted to do that, then I would have to give my credit card over to guarantee that everything would be paid for.
Speaker: So it then became a case why am I on an internal a phone call to room service and they're asking me for my credit card details? And eventually I just got so fed up of it out of date menu, all of these sorts of things. Then I've got to go to, ah, I just went out to, they so they lost the complete sale. And I left the hotel and ate elsewhere. And I just got so frustrated with it all.
Speaker: And you're telling us the story right now. So it's like the it's it can't be the first time that someone had had that experience. You couldn't be the first one where the menu was out of date and they didn't collect your credit card. Right. So it's it's someone along the way from a service standpoint. What I see there is someone along the way or multiple people people along the way have observed that as an opportunity to fix it and didn't.
Speaker: Um, if you have, if you have, if you're a hotel that allows people to check in without a a credit card for incidentals, you should say to them, just so you know, if you want to charge anything, to your room, they're going to have to collect your credit card. You could do it right now.
Speaker: That way you'd be thinking, Oh, I was going to order a room service. That makes a lot of sense, but they're just missing those opportunities. It's like the culture there doesn't seem to care that people are going to run into those issues and they, they're not going to be proactive to fix them.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. There are all sorts of other issues with it as well. I'm sure. since I get you what you mean. Like you're talking about training people to recognize all of these various different things that a guest says without really thinking about it, I suppose, but in answer to questions which are not leading, but very open questions.
Speaker: How do you deliver that training? Yes, so in most cases, it's there's two modes of training primarily. There is um and human live instructor-led training, like webinar training, at the beginning of ah of an engagement where all the employees and within scope are present and the training is delivered.
Speaker: That then segues into digital training which exists in our system. We have our own proprietary learning management system built in the platform and it's populated with all of our own proprietary training.
Speaker: So they go from that live instructor led training at the outset, and then they're led into a learning path that has a series of recommended trainings, which are kind of fundamental technique, technique building, culture building kind of trainings. And then there's an entire optional library, which is they're pointed to as the system spins up and the data starts flowing, um it it sends guidance to them on which videos they should watch based on their performance. So very specific to them. And this goes to the, the I think a question we'll be discussing a little bit more is AI. But I think that's that's the power of AI for us is that it can interrogate a lot of complex data. It can compare the what it observes to a library of knowledge that we've given it, you know in in particular, everything we know about frontline sales.
Speaker: And it's able to ascertain very quickly what are their deficits and which training content will most most directly help them and it will assign that to them. So it is sort of it goes from instructor led at the beginning, but it's mostly digital.
Speaker: And we're also providing the manager's guidance on what to coach people on, what are the coaching opportunities, again, derived from the data and butt it up against you know what it is we do and know to say, you know this person probably needs a room tour because they've never sold a room above one category. or you know There's ah there's ah about different um what we call deficits that you can identify purely from the data without observing them at all.
Speaker: And those are sort of what the AI is is focusing on. It turns out those are the bulk of the things. It can't tell whether they're smiling or not, as an example, but it can tell through from the conversion how consistent they are. It can tell from the price points how confident they are, that kind of thing.
Speaker: Right. And this is the data that is collected within the computer that the person on the front desk is using to check people in and to then do the service based sale. Correct. Yes. They're using whatever property management system or point of sale if you're in a restaurant.
Speaker: Right. And you're collecting that information about the individual and then using that information to identify where that person may have what you could call a hard skill deficit or More interestingly, I suppose, a soft skill deficit, you can say this person has never sold one of the top rooms in the hotel.
Speaker: Maybe they need to actually go and look and see what it's like so that they can have a conversation with someone about that type of room and how it would fit with the requirements of a guest who's arrived and just simply had a room booked for them or has booked something because they needed something. They'd just get me a room.
Speaker: And then when they're a hotel, There are vacancies in rooms and there's the opportunity for the the receptionist, the check-in person to upsell what they've brought into a higher level of room.
Speaker: Correct. Yep. That's exactly right. Right. And that, I suppose, is then where the whole sort return on the investment comes in because you can track the person's performance to the skills that they have learned, both the hard skills and the soft skills, to what they're actually doing with the client, the customer, the guest themselves.
Speaker: That's exactly right. the We feel like we were the first. I don't know if we're the only at this point, but we felt like we were the first company that merged pure digital training with direct outcome.
Speaker: So the feedback loop is like immediate. You can train someone and then their next shift, you can see whether the the deficit has improved or not. So that feedback loop um occurs consistently to allow us to see if the training is effective. Now, if it's not effective, that could be more than one thing. It could be A, they didn't watch it. even though they were supposed to, B, they watched it, but they didn't listen or apply it, or C, the training's bad. There are times that if we see a pattern where one piece of content is not getting the desired result, we'll swap it out, we'll reproduce it, we'll you know try something different. um But that immediate loop on the return on investment or the return on training is pretty unique. There's not a lot of systems out there that are equally as focused on getting the analytics and performance KPIs and delivering the training.
Speaker: No, I'm trying to think of something I'm thinking like, no, that so is very instant and very direct. assessment of the effectiveness of the training the person has been given because it's about how have they changed immediately and then the the training can be reinforced and i suppose the the individual themselves can receive a message from the system saying like know it'd be useful if you did if you looked at this video before you started work tomorrow Yeah, it it assigns it to them in the system and they're notified that it's been put in their recommended screen, if you will. And the manager is informed that this is an opportunity because we also want the manager to interact on it and say, i see that you're working on this thing, whatever it is. But yes, they're notified when they receive a recommended piece of training. Now, where we're deploying the AI is to get to much more personalized, call it natural language coaching.
Speaker: where the feedback they're going to get from the system is going to be much more like, we see you're struggling with the executive suite. We've assigned you a video we think will help. We also think you should go on a room tour. And it'll be like in in that type of language.
Speaker: So it's not ah it's not analytical. It's it's direct feedback. and And where we're beta testing that, it's been extremely well received. People enjoy it. They actually take it better from the AI than from their own managers in most cases. I was going to ask you what sort of reactions do you get from the people who are receiving the training?
Speaker: And so far it's all been positive. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. People will take criticism from a computer better than from a human because there's no judgment. They don't feel judged. It's weird, but it's true. Like it's they yeah they will take coaching from a computer better than they do from their manager.
Speaker: maybe managers have something to learn from i'm sure they do because it's i'm sure there are plenty of managers that are very well received i'm speaking in general broad terms but yes but yeah i think in general young managers you know people that are maybe two or three years removed from being on the front line they struggle on how to you know inspire and lead and they tend to come off you know a little judgy I was going to say a little bit direct. Yeah.
Speaker: Direct or or or passive aggressive, you know, like passively direct where they're, they just don't know. They just haven't been properly trained. And there's so many organizations that we encounter where particularly after COVID, The training departments are, or so you know, a skeleton of their former selves. And there just isn't enough time. they're They're worried about training on the fundamental functions of the job, not the soft skills. So a lot of managers now are not receiving
Speaker: that kind of ongoing development on how to properly coach people, how to properly have difficult conversations with people. And it's just sort of creating this this negative cycle. And so if we if the computer can give them the positive feedback, then at least something is.
Speaker: Yes, so sounds very promising. And you make me wonder, could the technology, of the system that you've developed at Frontline used in that management development situation as well. yeah we've you know We've been tinkering with this concept of coaching the coach. um And the the the key, the crux of it is, can we get access to structured data that that informs us what the managers are doing or not doing? There are some cases where where we can, because similarly, if we give the manager advice to coach someone on a certain behavior, we can see if that behavior has improved or not. And then we could infer that either the manager didn't talk to them about it or they did a poor job. So we are kind of tinkering with it in the lab, if you will, to see is is there an application here where we could
Speaker: coach the coach on their coaching style. But we're not quite there yet because it it is more inferred than direct data. That is true, but it it is fascinating that you could, in theory, identify an issue with a frontline worker, someone from the house on the shop floor.
Speaker: You could provide the information to a manager or supervisor on how to deliver that one-to-one type interaction of helping people to improve and see within an hour or so whether that interaction that the system has been told has happened has actually had an impact on how that person has performed their job. That's exactly correct. Yeah. and And we do, we have these insight reports that go to managers that does suggest coaching, who to coach and for what reason. So it's very specific. We just haven't taken the next step yet to say, if the AI observes that that behavior has improved, is it attributed back to the manager or is the manager, are we going to repeat, you know, some kind of feedback loop to the manager? I think at some point we will get there. We just said we haven't yet. But you're right. the The underlying data and intelligence is present in the interactions. to We could probably extract that.
Speaker: It is fascinating. And it's going to be an extremely interesting journey to see how you develop and take all of this forward. But I'm very grateful for you sharing where the technologies has come from, where it is and the value that it's adding.
Speaker: Thank you very much. It's been fascinating. Thank you. Thank you very much. My pleasure. you I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Geoffrey Toffetti, the CEO of Frontline Performance Group.
Speaker: You can find more information about both of us by using the links in the description. I am sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of the independent minds as much as Joffrey and I have enjoyed making it, so please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
Speaker: Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.
