InTouch | February 2022

INtouch

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SCRLA TO HOST ITS 69TH ANNUAL STARS OF THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY AWARDS GALA The SCRLA will host its 69th Annual Stars of South Carolina Hospitality Awards on Monday, February 21 at 1881 Event Hall in Spartanburg.

The Stars of South Carolina Hospitality Industry Awards celebrate the exceptional professionalism and outstanding service of top individuals in the hospitality industry. These individuals go above and beyond to contribute to the positive image of the hospitality industry while also being confronted with supply and labor shortages.

JOIN US AS WE CELEBRATE OUR BEST AND BRIGHTEST STARS IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY! FEBRUARY 21, 2022 1881 EVENT HALL | SPARTANBURG, SC SCRLA.ORG/STARSOFTHEINDUSTRY

SCRLA Event Spotlight 2022 SOUTH CAROLINA PROSTART INVITATIONAL Save the date and join us March 6-8 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Columbia!

The South Carolina ProStart Invitational is the state’s premier competition for high school culinary arts and hospitality students.

SCPI is hosted by the South Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Foundation.

The competition includes Restaurant Management and Culinary divisions. The Culinary Competition requires students to demonstrate knife skills incorporated into cooking a three-course meal in 60 minutes with only two butane burners, two eight-foot tables and no electricity or running water. In the Management Competition, students develop a brand new restaurant concept to pitch to a panel of industry and post-secondary judges, complete with critical thinking and verbal presentation rounds.

The top five teams from the culinary and management competitions are awarded generous educational scholarships to help further their careers in the restaurant and foodservice industry. Visit SCRLA.org/events for more event details.

“Every hotel or restaurant guest can tell you of a time when a particular individual made their experience exceptional,” said Susan Cohen, SCRLA’s new President and CEO. “Recognizing the true stars of our industry, who daily exemplify the meaning of hospitality through their professionalism and service, is one of the highlights of our year.”

Support the following individuals and companies by registering at SCRLA.org/StarsOfTheIndustry.

Hospitality Educator of the Year Bill Twaler • Truist Culinary & Hospitality Innovation Center Hospitality Supplier of the Year SpotOn Outstanding Community Service Program (<5 locations) Haydn Shaak • Restaurant 17 and Hotel Domestique Outstanding Community Service Program (>5 locations) Ryan Larson • SERG Restaurant Group Outstanding Community Event Midlands Area Vaccination Clinic for Hospitality Employees Blue Marlin Lovelace Family Medicine, P.A. Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center Rising Star Qiah Hernandez • Lazy Goat/Table 301 Apprenticeship Hotelier of the Year Jason Price • Pinnacle Partnership Yatish Patel • Sycamore Investment Group

Lodging Manager of the Year Jana Medlin • Wingate by Wyndham Columbia/Lexington Chris Osborne • Embassy Suites by Hilton Greenville Golf Resort & Conference Center Lodging Front of House Employee of the Year Bryan Hernandez • Wentworth Mansion Delphine Holden • IMIC Hotels Lodging Heart of House Employee of the Year Rosa Fonseca • Sheraton Myrtle Beach Telly West • North Charleston Marriott Hotel Chef of the Year Fernando Coppola • AC by Marriott Hotel Greenville Restaurateur of the Year Michael Ivey • Rick Erwin Dining Group Bob Munnich • Dray Bar and Grill & 1800 Drayton Catering and Events Restaurant Manager of the Year Natasha Cline • Southern888 LLC Lucas Haramut • Soby’s New South Cuisine Restaurant Front of House Employee of the Year Nichelle Torres • Rick Erwin Dining Group Sydney Lopez • Market on Main Restaurant Heart of House Employee of the Year James Glenn • Hilton Greenville Tierra Locklear • Greenville Country Club Restaurant Bartender of the Year Ben Fleming • Heirloom – A Milltown Eatery Kelsey Bundy • Market on Main Restaurant Chef of the Year Adam Cooke • Topsoil Restaurant Robin Hinton • Lucy Buffet’s LuLu’s North Myrtle Beach Outstanding Certified Sommelier Hernan Martinez • Hampton Street Vineyard Tori Whittenberg • Ruth’s Chris Steak House

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MAXIMIZING TALENT RETENTION IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY

Reprinted from LodgingMagazine.com

THREE WAYS TO ELEVATE DIGITAL CUSTOMER SERVICE As 2022 begins, hospitality professionals should expect an increase in travel. A surge of tourists not only means increased demand for hotels, but it also means heightened traveler expectations. More than before the pandemic, a brand’s customer service can make or break consumer loyalty. And with digital customer service booming across industries post-COVID, hospitality brands will face the challenge of providing exceptional customer service without the need for human interaction.

A digital transformation is underway: Implementing a robust digital customer service strategy will improve guests’ trips and can reduce business costs by 30% while increasing customer satisfaction by 19%. With the anticipated uptick in travel volume in 2022, heightened consumer demand for an exceptional customer experience will increase. The brands that can deliver that service level throughout key moments in the customer experience will flourish. By using a global approach and creating connections with customers throughout the planning, mid-trip, post-travel stages, and more, hospitality brands can maximize traveler satisfaction and create customers for life.

Here are three digital customer service tips that can set brands apart and unlock long-term customer loyalty: Enable seamless channel switching to simplify agent workflows. As travel ramps up, hospitality companies might face many incoming questions from eager travelers in the months leading up to their trip. And with omnichannel communication remaining top of mind for most brands, there is an increasing number of platforms where customers can engage with a company. Internal teams must collaborate to reduce repetition and maximize efficiency. Customers’ journeys can be seamless with the ability to switch between multiple channels without sacrificing a cohesive experience. For instance, a hotel guest should be able to send an email regarding a reservation change but follow up via SMS messaging or social media without needing to repeat their question.

With seamless channel switching comes the need for swift response times, a factor that is increasingly crucial for customers.

Rather than making agents toggle between multiple channels to play catch up before addressing an inquiry, an omnichannel platform can provide a single view of all previous interactions, facilitating swift response times.

Provide self-service options to reduce high call volume. With

the majority of hospitality brands working with leaner customer service teams, digital self-service options are key to reducing agent attrition and deflecting call volume. Self-service tools provide a way for customers to get their questions answered without needing to interact with a brand directly, and consumers are increasingly preferring self-service systems. While traditional self-service tools have been around for over a decade, digital self-service offerings address customer needs in the months leading up to their trip.

For instance, chatbots tackle repeatedly asked questions by pulling information from knowledge bases or pre-written responses and help escalate urgent travel questions. When leveraging AI, it’s important to keep containment rate in mind, which tracks the number of users on an automated service and reaches a solution without speaking to a human agent. Even if the containment rate is low for an interaction, automation might have made that interaction more efficient, allowing agents to spend more time tackling high-priority issues. In addition, brand communities can also tackle high call volume. These platforms are hubs for the brand’s most loyal followers that can provide newer customers with property details, hacks, and destination recommendations.

Use customer experience insights to understand consumer behaviors across digital channels. As digital customer service becomes more prevalent for the hospitality industry, it’s crucial to use a customer experience insights platform to track customer challenges and overall sentiment. These tools can be helpful to monitor feedback around new hotel property launches, room refurbishes, or service quality at a hotel. By analyzing the questions that are repeatedly asked by travelers, brands can adjust their digital customer service strategy to tackle the questions before they come up. A customer experience insights platform can integrate all digital customer service interactions into one place, making it easy to analyze conversations across digital platforms. By investing in a customer experience insights platform, hospitality brands can reduce the volume of questions and maximize their customer service.

Hospitality brands will face the challenge of cutting down response times and maximizing efficiency while facing elevated call volumes transitioning into the New Year. By investing in an enterprise-scale platform and a dynamic digital customer service strategy, brands can provide an elevated travel experience.

In today’s environment where restaurant and hospitality businesses are experiencing an increase in consumer demand, managing employees in this uncertain period must include defining strategies that attract and keep the best workers. Those workers have the upper hand when considering employment options.

It’s important to further establish why talent retention is so important in the hospitality and restaurant industries, given that a high rate of turnover is normal. Why spend time training a top-notch employee only to lose that person to another restaurant or hotel – or another industry?

Although the full impact of the Omicron variant on the hospitality industry is not yet known, brands are again looking ahead with an expansive lens. Crisis always brings with it opportunity — and despite the incredible challenges the sectors faced during the past 20 months, a range of new opportunities are emerging.

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For one, travel demand is again surging, requiring hospitality companies to rapidly hire and retain workers who are eager to utilize their skills in an accelerating global industry.

The industry’s embrace of digital technologies and innovation is driving an increasing need for expertise in these fields. Additionally, the benefits that the hospitality industy offers​​ — and have been innovating to become more competitive — will help attract and retain talent. Businesses that understand how to appeal to this emerging labor base through new working models and the right culture and values will find themselves well ahead of the game for 2022 and beyond.

Because the pandemic led many workers to leave these industries for good, this trend created the challenge of both attracting and retaining talent. Demand for workers is so intense that many restaurants are offering various incentives to attract and retain talent such as sign-on bonuses, 401(K)s, paid vacation, time off, and more flexible hours. A number of restaurant chains have announced wage hikes for employees, while government support is also continuing in some cases.

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Yet amidst these opportunities, these same organizations also must contend with growing competition for qualified talent, along with challenges related to shortages of qualified workers. How will they cope?

It is suggested that hospitality and restaurant leaders focus on three talent attraction and retention strategies: Career development and training, compensation and rewards and employees’ perception of the organization – its values and culture.

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Addressing all three of these strategies requires a level of transparency and engagement about company matters that can be uncomfortable for some leaders. To effectively manage employee attraction and retention efforts, corporate communications and leadership should be clear and consistent, including clear expectation-setting. If any change is to occur, employees should feel like they are part of the change instead of it just happening to them.

Good employees are going to respect and appreciate that approach, and they’ll want to stay for the company’s journey because they are a part of it. heartland.us/restaurant

February 2022 • SCRLA.org

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