What do you do when you run one of the most-recognized hotel chains on planet Earth, and learn there’s a better way to connect with customers and employees?
If you’re Bill Marriott, you start a blog. Marriott:
“I’m venturing into uncharted territory as I launch this blog. A year ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was — until my Communications team began telling me about all the blog traffic on travel and tourism. Now I know this is where the action is if you want to talk to your customers directly — and hear back from them. Soon we’ll add an audio version of the blog. That’s how I’m most comfortable: telling stories and listening.
Blogging will allow me to do what I’ve been doing for years — on a global scale. Talking to the customer comes easily to me. I visit 250 hotels around the world every year. This year I’ll be traveling once again to China where we have 27 hotels, 16 under construction and many more in our development pipeline. At every hotel, I talk to associates, from housekeepers to general managers, to get their feedback. I call it “management by walking around.” Like my parents, I value the input from our associates at all levels. I make lots of notes — and my best ideas almost always come from our people in the field.”
Right on.
(hat tip: david gammell)
Tag: Bill Marriott
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Christopher Carfi, CEO and co-founder of Cerado, looks at sales, marketing, and the business experience from the customers point of view. He currently is focused on understanding how emerging social technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking are enabling the creation of new types of customer-driven communities. He is the author of the Social Customer Manifesto weblog, and has been occasionally told that he drives and snowboards just a little too quickly.
