Reading time: 55 seconds
– A couple of years ago I spoke to 400 financial advisers on a one week cruise around the Caribbean.
The service aboard the Celebrity Millennium was exceptional (there are ways to tell if it’s for real). By chance I learned that the head of customer service training for Celebrity Cruises was aboard at the time – so I found him and we chatted.
“We’re in the Celebrity business,” he told me, “the first thing we do is leverage the staff to treat the guests as if they are celebrities. That means you know their name, what they’re interested in and stuff like that. It means you light up when you see them. And you do it respectfully. If there are aspects that rub you the wrong way we show them how to imagine they are in a sitcom or a drama.”
This is simple and clever and works. Given most situation it’s easy for the staff to figure what to do. And it’s a heck of a lot easier than trying to remember a mission statement.
You could try the same for your business. A car rental company might be in the Freedom business. A financial company in the Future business. A computer chain in the Expedition business.
Get the right word and keep it simple and your staff can ask themselves, “am I doing it now or not?” If the answer if yes, your brand promise is on track.
Thank you for this great piece of content. Best Regards
The reality is very different Nicholas. I worked for Celebrity. It’s one of the worst company to work for. There’s a totally different world behind the appearance, it’s the crew world. So many rules and duties. More than 12 hours of working per day, much more than what it says on the contract and you can say anything otherwise they will fire you. Keep in mind that the majority of the crew is from the “third world” and they don’t want to lose their job even if that means work over hours unpaid…
Wow. That’s very depressing. My experience was 8 years ago.
Yeah, I also worked for Celebrity and was treated worse than the donkeys in Santorini. Instead of “leverage (methods evidently withheld) the staff to treat the guests as if they are celebrities,” an improvement might be, “treat the staff with enough respect that they feel incentivized to excel in their work.” Truth is, Nicholas, cruise ships are not in the Celebrity, Freedom, Future, or Expedition business. They’re in the Modern Slavery business.
my experience was more recent (finished 5 months ago a 6-year tenure), and yes, they’re happy to overwork and underpay. they even add additional duties mid-contract and supervisors will tell you ‘if you don’t like it, there’s the door.’ I was lower/middle-management and I fought with all the influence my position held to try to mitigate the changes to my department, but celebrity is so much about their bottom line, they continue to eliminate positions and add duties to those remaining without augmenting salaries or hourly wages. It’s ridiculous. I’m now with a different company and so far appreciating their treatment of their crew.