Caesars Entertainment Corporation’s Service with Passion Events (SWP) are designed to improve the service results of a specific outlet or department by engaging, empowering, and coaching employees in a highly structured and purposeful manner over the course of a few days. During the event, a team of internal Caesars Entertainment service leaders from around the business are recruited to participate.
The true strength of the Service with Passion event is in the structure of the hour that each coach spends with an employee. This hour of coaching is designed to be similar to a golf or music lesson and has three distinct phases:
1. Observation and Modeling Phase
This phase is all about building confidence and rapport with the employee. The coach is only to model the behaviors he or she wishes the employee to exhibit and is not allowed to specifically address the desired behavior change. The goal of this is to see if the employee will change his or her own behavior once he or she observes the coach. If he or she does change the behavior based on the modeling of the coach, the coach immediately recognizes the success of the employee, reinforcing the learning for the employee. The coach makes notes on the desired behavior changes and prioritizes the behaviors he or she wishes to coach the employees on at a later time during the hour.
2. Transition Phase
The transition conversations are highly structured and always occur at the halfway point in the hour. It begins with an appreciation for the employee’s time and willingness to share and then reinforces some of the positive behaviors that were discussed in Phase 1. The last part of the transition phase is to ask the employee if he or she would be willing to receive some feedback on how to provide better service. Once the coach has the employee’s acceptance to receive feedback, they can then move to Phase 3.
3. Coaching Phase
Coaches are instructed to prioritize feedback based on ease of implementation balanced with speed of results. For example, saying, “Thank you” to guests for their business is something that would be easy to coach a server to do and should get an immediate reaction from guests. It allows the coach and employee to have a quick “win” and will allow the coach to move on to more difficult behavior changes now that the employee has experienced some success with the first piece of feedback given. The coach ends the hour summarizing the key behaviors that were positively reinforced in Phase 1 and words of encouragement regarding the feedback suggestions from Phase 3.
Results
There have been five SWP Events. In each instance of the SWP, service scores have markedly improved for each outlet or department. For example, the SWP held at the Carnival World Buffet at the Rio in Las Vegas resulted in an immediate 10-point change in the Server Friendly/Helpful service scores. Other service-related metrics, such as food quality, wait time, menu appeal, and price value also experienced a shift of between 8 and 12 points on each metric due to the event. An SWP event in the Casino Beverage department at Planet Hollywood not only saw Server Friendly/Helpful service gains but a 3-point reduction in overall service failures for the department. This is significant because for each point reduction in service failures, Caesars is twice as likely to get an “A” service rating from those guests. Similar results have been found in departments such as Security and Slots.
