Casino Customer Service

Casino Service Requires Patience

One of the most important elements of great casino service is patience.  Many of your guests are older and have special needs.  Patience is particularly important with them.  What can you do to remember how important it is to be patient with them, that’s it’s all about them?  Guests may ask you for directions to the restroom or buffet 300 times a day.  Just be patient, smile and help them.

When it comes to helping guests have a better experience, one of the problems gaming employees run into is their own lack of preparation.  They haven’t thought about the different wants, needs and desires of their guests at any given moment.  They haven’t put any real thought into making sure that each guest has a great experience.  You need to be prepared.  That may mean showing up for work 15 minutes early so you’re ready when your shift starts.  Study the restaurant’s menu, familiarize yourself with that day’s specials and be aware of new shows or promotions.   Being prepared leads to great service.

One of the best ways to provide great service is to ask questions.  Employees at gaming properties sometimes think they know exactly what the guest wants and then they’re amazed at what they learn when they start asking questions.  Asking questions shows the guest you care about them.  It also gives you the information needed to solve their problems.

Casino employees intent on providing great guest service get a lot of help from their internal customers and should treat them with respect.  When our company does casino employee training, one of the important things we talk about is internal customer service.  Internal customers are those people who support you and help you do your job.  We haven’t been to a casino yet where any one person could do it all, because it doesn’t work that way.  No matter what your role is at your property, treat your internal customers with dignity and respect.  After all, they may be the people who help you tomorrow.

Casino employees who take the time to get to know their customers will soon discover they can do a better job of providing great service.  Take an interest in your guests.  Learn about their families, their hopes and their dreams.  The more you know, the more you grow.  The more you grow, the more you can help your guests.

Casinos that want to do a better job of managing their growth need to stop worrying about guest satisfaction and instead focus on their customers’ willingness to assume some personal risk on the casino’s behalf.  In other words, they need to move their customer research into the area of risk.

Casino guests who are willing to risk their own personal reputation and spread positive word-of-mouth advertising about a casino are guest advocates and the degree to which a property has advocates is a highly reliable predictor of future growth. 

Following are some tips on customer satisfaction, risk and guest advocates.

Tip No. 1.  Guest satisfaction has zero correlation to the future growth of any casino.  No matter what your guest satisfaction surveys say - even if satisfaction is in the stratosphere - it doesn’t matter.  Research doesn’t support the concept that customer satisfaction predicts growth.

Tip No. 2.  The nebulous term “satisfaction” carries no personal risk.  A casino guest who says on a survey that he or she is satisfied with their gaming experience and the casino’s customer service can make that comment because it doesn’t put them at risk.

Tip No. 3.  Risk predicts growth.  Ask someone which restaurants they are satisfied with and they will gladly tell you.  Ask them which restaurants they recommend and their answer puts their personal reputation at risk.  They don’t want to disappoint their friends, who are likely to patronize the restaurants they recommend.

Tip. No. 4.  Risk adds validity.  By moving from satisfied to recommend, you move from a low-risk question to a high-risk question.  That movement adds amazing validity to the question and the response you receive.  Do your research then put a system into place for improvement within your casino.

Tip No. 5.  Advocates are willing to assume risk.  Look at the pieces you have in place to make it easy for your guests to risk their reputation by telling family and friends about your amazing casino.  The easier you make it for your guests to feel comfortable recommending your casino, the better your casino will do going forward.

Outstanding casino customer service requires far more than smiling and saying hello.  It requires intelligence on the part of every employee in the casino.  It takes intelligence to provide good service.  You have to think about your guests and their needs so that you’re ready to solve their problems or to just know what they want or need.  People who think as well as act help guests have an amazing experience.

Internal Improvement May be Needed to Create Casino Guest Advocates 

Improvement is one of seven best business practices casinos should embrace as they roll out a program to turn guests into advocates.  This involves identifying areas in which a casino would benefit from making improvements that ultimately create more guest advocates.  There are a variety of ways to make these improvements reality, including coaching, consulting, training and more.  Training, for example, should be high in energy and creatively presented.  Hallmarks of great training include emphasis on accelerated learning, participant centered, small groups, bite-size lessons, fast paced, high level of activity, fun and application based, not theory.