By Frank J. Diekmann
Let’s say you really want to make some great points about the value of human resources and consumer expectations today. Sure, you could go to the trouble of holding a three-day conference complete with keynote speakers and breakout sessions for the benefit of credit union execs who work in HR and organizational development. Or…
Or, you could just have tried to check into the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas if you wanted a real-world lesson in why just the basics of HR, management and plain common sense matter a heck of a lot more to the consumer than just about any graduate level course, expensive software, or six-figure consulting firm’s analysis.
That’s exactly what happened last week when the CUNA HR and Organizational Development Council hosted its annual meeting at the Paris Hotel Las Vegas, where the gambling began with the choice on how to check-in.
Let’s be clear: the Council did a great job as the Councils always do of putting together a strong program with numerous speakers offering perceptive insights on critical issues around human capital in credit unions. But, through no fault of the HROD Council, a key takeaway for many came before they ever got to their rooms.
Where's the 'Express' Part?
Like many other hotels, especially in Vegas, the big casino-owners are attempting to steer guests to so-called check-in “kiosks,” where you use your driver’s license, a credit card and a code the hotel has previously provided you to generate a room key. You never deal with a front-desk agent, and the hotel cuts jobs and costs—because if there’s one thing the home of gambling and the $20 hamburger doesn’t do, it’s generate revenue, right?
But here’s the thing you already know about technology, whether at your credit union or just the apps, websites and “platforms” you deal with in your everyday life—it needs to work. We expect it to work. Because when it doesn’t…
If you’ve ever had a long trip and were just looking forward to getting to your room and unwinding for a bit or maybe even crashing, you don’t want the Paris (the hotel, not the city) at the end of your itinerary. After two delayed flights and a rerouting of a trip to Las Vegas from Florida that involved going through Minnesota, I was already mentally unpacking when I approached the hotel’s lobby to find a line so long there was a rumor that it went all the way to France. Thank goodness, I had the express check-in, I thought confidently, and even though it involved negotiating a mob in four or five Argentinean bread “lines” for the kiosks, it only took about 10 minutes to get to the machine. And now I was just a few glorious minutes from my room, but…
But it wouldn’t read my driver’s license. Or the license of the guy next to me. Or the driver’s licenses of several people I talked to at the meeting. And why a hotel—with CUToday.info seemingly reporting a hotel breach-of-the-week item—needs anyone’s driver’s license is a whole other question. It’s taking my credit card and has my reservation already; do the crooks really need more?
Back of the Line, Pal
A Paris Hotel employee working the kiosks who had all the empathy of a worn-down, veteran blackjack dealer who’s been on his aching feet all night sucking in cigarette smoke and praying God will soon cash in his chips, gave me the equivalent message of “tough” and thumbed me to the back of the main check-in line. Which I believe violates the Geneva Conventioneers principles.
I’m no CFO so I may be off by a few, but there in that cheesy Versailles knock-off of a lobby I counted between 65 and 70 people in front of me. And what was I hearing from everyone around me? It wasn’t “Viva la France”; it was lot more “Excuse my French, but…”
And here’s where Bad Management 2.0 was putting on a breakout session of its own. The hotel could have had a manager working the line and apologizing to people for the delay; as any CU knows (or should), communication goes a long way. It could have yanked a waiter or waitress off the casino floor and handed out drinks. Or it could have given away free $5 or even $10 chips (the house is going to win them and a whole lot more back, anyway). It could have done any of those things, but…
But it didn’t.
Instead, guests trudged slowly forward like unwanted immigrants in a line that snaked through the lobby, all of us right at the edge of anarchy and warily eyeing any bastard who might be trying to cut in, trigger-fingers ready to beat them back with a barrage of Samsonite roller-bags shot like mortars if we needed to.
One of Life's Great Mysteries
One-hour and fifteen minutes after getting into that line—that’s right, a quarter of the time it takes to fly across the country—I arrived at the spiritual grounds we were all seeking, the check-in desk, where I counted exactly three agents at a counter that had room for four times that many. There I met Collette, who was unbelievably polite and apologetic even though she had been at the end of the line all day and on the receiving end of some pretty rude people. How the Collettes of the world, the flight attendants and gate agents and everyone else in the retail end of the “hospitality” industry, restrain themselves from leaping over those counters and punching people in the throat every 10-12 minutes will always remain to me one of life’s great, unsolved mysteries.
Finally, on my way out of the lobby with the Holy Grail key in hand, I talked to a hotel employee who told me the installation of the kiosks had led to layoffs at the Paris Las Vegas, and that there were problems with the machines nearly every day. Some days, he told me, the card dispending machine didn’t work even when the kiosks did. I don’t know if that’s true or not; all I know is that a day later keynoter Steve Farber kicked off the HR meeting by sharing, among other things, just how much damage an unhappy employee can do and why “consumer satisfaction” is really the opening ante today. Except…
Except that for many attendees, the real conference lessons in all that had started one day earlier.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info and can be reached at Frank@CUToday.info and followed @FrankCUToday.