The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Boosting Hotel Revenue Through Exceptional Customer Service and Upselling with Geoffrey Toffetti

Episode Date: April 27, 2025

Boosting Hotel Revenue Through Exceptional Customer Service and Upselling with Geoffrey Toffetti Frontlinepg.com About the Guest(s): Geoffrey Toffetti is the CEO of Frontline Performance Group, headquartered in Florida, where he partners with over 2,500 hotels across more than 100 countries to generate millions in incremental revenue. His career in the hospitality industry began humbly as a valet at a Florida hotel, but his passion for sales and deep understanding of the industry propelled him quickly up the ranks. Leading FPG, Geoffrey Toffetti has guided the company through strategic growth phases, including acquisitions such as Drake Beal in the U.S. and TSA Solutions in Asia. The latter acquisition was notably carried out during the height of the COVID-19 crisis. Episode Summary: In this episode of the Chris Voss Show, listeners are introduced to Geoffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group, a trailblazer in enhancing hospitality service standards and driving revenue growth for hotel clients globally. Geoffrey Toffetti shares his journey from a frontline hotel valet to leading a prestigious company influencing performance in the hospitality industry. His experience and initiatives have empowered many frontline employees to enhance customer service while influentially increasing profit margins. Through FPG, Geoffrey Toffetti established a bridge from being a service provider to a technology-first organization, especially vital during and after the pandemic era. Focusing on the myriad of possibilities within the hospitality industry, Geoffrey Toffetti discusses the unique challenges and opportunities with incremental revenues, including upselling tactics. Engagement and effective training of frontline employees have proven to pay high dividends, not just for the organizations but for the employees themselves. The conversation delves into the transformation of customer service standards over the years, implicitly hinting that true customer satisfaction and incremental sales go hand-in-hand. Geoffrey Toffetti elaborates on their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings that integrate learning management systems, which empower hotel and restaurant employees to excel by engaging customers effectively and increasing profitability. Key Takeaways: Incremental Revenue: Understanding and leveraging upselling at every customer interaction point significantly enhance the guest experience and the business’s profitability. Employee Empowerment: Proper training and incentive systems can transform employees into top earners and significantly improve staff retention levels. Service First Philosophy: Sales should be viewed as a service to the customer, enhancing their experience rather than just a transactional necessity. Technology and Training: FPG provides powerful tools and training to ensure teams can maximize their potential, reflecting positively on both revenue and customer satisfaction. Consistency in Service: Achieving consistent exemplary service across every interaction is key to fostering customer loyalty and positive experiences. Notable Quotes: "Sales isn't something you do to your customer, it's something you do for them." "We want your guests to leave fat, happy, and broke." "Entrusting your best services to the guests is the best way to garner that trust and brand loyalty." "Turning common sense into commonplace." "Offer your best services is the best service you can offer."

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Now here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome home. Ladies and gentlemen there, and ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 16 years of Chris Voss Show and nearly there, and ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 16 years of Chris Voss show and nearly 2,400 episodes of the show that we've been doing and bringing you every day or weekday, I should say, because I do take the weekends off for the last 16 years.

Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress Chris Voss, Chris Voss One on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we're joined by a wonderful gentleman. We're going to be talking about his insights, how to run business, frontline employees, and all sorts of different things as it were.

Today, we're talking with Jeff Joffrey Toffetti, and we're going to be getting into it with him. He is the CEO of Frontline Performance Group based in Florida. He partners with 2,500 hotels across 100 plus countries, driving them or helping drive them into millions of incremental revenue. His own journey in hospitality started humbly as a car valet at Florida hotel, but with a passion for sales and deep understanding of the industry, he climbed the reins quickly. Today, he leads FPG where they work with top brands like Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt

and others. He's guided the company through strategic growth, including acquisitions of their primary competitors, Drake, Beal in the US and TSA Solutions in Asia and the latter during the height of the COVID-19 crisis. Welcome to the show, Giaffrey. How are you? I am wonderful. Thank you for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Yeah, it would be front line website would be frontlinepg.com. PG stands for performance group. That's our primary website and we're on LinkedIn and all of the other socials

under FPG or front line performance group as well. So give us a 30,000 over you. What you guys do there? Yeah, we've spent the last 32 years working with frontline teams to help teach them to better engage their guests and increase those service levels they're providing and in doing so increase revenue because all studies show the happier you are with your service, the more likely you are to spend more money on it. Yeah, I mean it goes without saying, but we have a technology platform that helps motivate

and manage the performance of the teams and we provide very specialized training to help them increase their actual sales skills at the point of sale. We work primarily in hotels now. Hotels. I mean, that's got to be a good business. People have traveled, people have to see things, but you know, it's a, it's probably, you know, there's probably some thin margins maybe in that business or are there? Yeah, it depends on which hotel you're referring to, but yeah, generally speaking, I think, especially since COVID margins have been challenging hospitality

and every incremental revenue dollar that they can generate at the point of sale has a much higher profitability margin than the than the base reservation because when someone walks in they think they know what the revenue is already and if they can sell them something else that becomes very very profitable. So what is a micro transaction or incremental transaction I should say incremental transaction what does that do what is that how do you identify what that is and define it? Yeah. So the, if you think about you book your room at a hotel, you arrived there, you've booked a certain amount of revenue.

So anything that they can sell you above that is what is incremental revenue. So you think about things like a better room, a better view, a dining experience that you can take your wife out on the beach and put your toes in the sand or a cabana by the pool. Any of those services that they can give you, they can sell you increases your experience because you're having a better experience and it generates very high margin revenue for the hotel. And this goes for restaurants.

If you're able to sell additional items at a table, that's highly valuable revenue for a restaurant. Another round of drinks that you wouldn't have otherwise sold because you're actually attending to the guests and you're paying attention and you're wanting them to have fun and you're engaging them. It just leads to these incremental transactions. And I mean, every little dollar adds up really when it comes down to it. And if it increases the guest experience, then you're having a much better time.

I, there's been times where I've done things and I'm like, I didn't know that I could have bought that in addition and I would have bought it just, you know, because if I'm on vacation, I want to, you know, enjoy myself since that's one break I get the, you know, the other thing I see is, you know, I don't know what it is. Customer service has gone to shit over the last 20 or 30 years. I mean, somehow we have this revolutionary Tom Peters book, you know, in search of excellence that kind of create this customer service revolution. And then I know some work got lost.

I don't know where, but you know, you, you see people that they really handle. I'm not saying all waiters are bad because I've, I deal with some great ones. I have some ones that are great friends, but you see a lot of people that they're just phoning in the, the, the tip experience, you know, the, if they live on tips and stuff like that, you just see them phoning it in over the last 20 years. I've, I'm, you know, I'll go to a bar and I'll be sitting there going, you know, I've had an empty drink here for half an hour. I've been trying to wave down the bartender and I would probably have bought a couple

more drinks. I mean, not to get drunk or anything. I probably bought some food on top of that, but I can't give this guy's attention or gal's attention over here. I'm checking to make sure that I'm topped off on my drink. I can't tell you how many times I go to restaurants now and I'm sitting in there going, I'd like to choke the rest of this food down, but I need some, you know, a new Coke or coffee or something like that.

And it's just amazing how many people don't connect the two dots between that service customer experience of selling the client and leaving money on the table, really when it comes down to it. Yeah. We have a saying that sales isn't something you do to your customers, something you can for them because you're not serving them. If you're not selling them something, I mean, they're there to procure your meal or your room or your experience or whatever

it is. And the, in the, in the food service industry, everything you just said, they're like pet peeves of ours. And you can imagine, we spend all of our time developing people to serve guests. So we're very sensitive to bad service. And unfortunately, to your point, it's more bad than good in a lot of places nowadays. But the replenishment and attention, that's really the key to the restaurant incremental sales is just replenish timely and pay attention to what they're saying and offer them the things that they want. It's the same kind of thing in a hotel. We never advocate for being pushy. We just

advocate to listen to the guests. Yes, comes in, let's say you're going on vacation and you have a teenager with you, and you booked a room, and he went online, you want booking.com, whatever you bought a room at the best value, you arrive, you're all excited. If the front desk agent doesn't notice that you have a teenager with you and offer you more space, then they're doing you a disservice. They say, I see your wife and you're traveling with your wife and your teenager, we have a suite available where that teenager

can have their own room in the living room at night, you can have some privacy. And if I say it like that, I didn't ask you anything. It's not awkward. I'm just recommending it to you. And that's basically what we teach, is just listen and recommend. Yeah. You're not saying in any way, shape or form the teens are paying the ass, you don't want to be seen with them. No, I'm just teasing, teasing the teenage crowd there on all five of them that listen to the show, but no, it's, it's, there's, there's opportunity for upsell when you're on vacation or when you're doing travel or any different things, especially at a hotel, you like to feel pampered.

One of my favorite things was the Fairmont, I think it was a Fairmont, a Fairmont hotel in, in Santa Monica. I used to love to stay out all the time. That or the, I can't remember, Lowe's is the other place I used to love to stay. They're on the strip. But they have someone in there that remembers your name, like the concierge. He knows your name in the hotel. And when he sees you, he says, hey, Chris, how are you doing today?

And you're just like, how do you know my name? Fucking stalking me, dude. It's a savant. He's a savant. Yeah. And you know, just, just stuff like that, that adds to the experience. Like I'm, I've, you know, I've been going to Fairmont hotels for a billion years, 20 years now, I still tell a story about first time I ran into one of this in the thing, I mean, that's how long it's probably 20, 30 years I've been telling that story.

And you know, customer experiences stick with people is my point. It a hundred percent. It really makes a difference. So talk to us about how you started this business. How did you grow up? What were some of your influences of being an entrepreneur? Yeah. And I wish I had started it.

The founder started it. I've been with the company about 15 years now, but he started it because he worked in the frontline in car rental and rose to the top of the ranks as a frontline seller. And I joined because I started my career as you mentioned, the beginning of the ballet, but I really started, I went from ballet to front desk and I became the top up seller in the property. This was before there was even a formal upsell program. There was just a little commission and they were like, if you sell something, you can

have a commission. I'm more than double my pay on the upsells. So the point where they promoted me because I was making too much money for a front desk agent and that's how I got into management. So I recognized immediately when I met the founder that I get this, I understand how to do it. He wasn't working at any hotels at the time. So my mission when I joined as a partner was to break into the hospitality vertical, which

we successfully did about a year later. But my background, I have a fairly unconventional path to being a CEO. I started at the front line, I worked my way up at the hotel. Then I left the hotel and went to a dot com startup at the beginning of 2000, which didn't go great because the bubble popped six months later. But we were able to transform the business almost in reverse from what I've done with FPG is we went from a dot com to a services business and survived by providing practical services. But we had built an online platform in a time where no companies were web native. So that gave us a cost advantage.

And we grew that business over 11, 12 years before I left. We had gone from basically zero value to worth a couple hundred million. And then we sold it. And that's when I met Ziyad and joined FPG. And when I joined FPG, it was a much smaller company. And as I said, it wasn't working in hospitality. And so I was able to join and came in as like the managing partner.

And then he promoted me to CEO in April of 2021 and he semi-retired because we were really transitioning from consulting and training to technology first. And that was more my lane and it's just worked out really well. And I think, you know, COVID, he realized he wanted to spend some more time with his family. He's taking advantage of that and doing that now. That's what I would have done during COVID. Hey, you take the wheel, man.

I'm going to take a break here. This COVID stuff is a little much. God. I know. Two years of our lives disappeared. It's weird. Four, maybe. I don't know.

Two, three. It was weird, man. I look back on it now and I'm just like, did that really happen? Do we live through that? But evidently we did. It was a strange time for sure. But I actually, you know, I used to travel every week. And then for two years I didn't travel at all.

So I actually got to raise my kids and make them breakfast in the morning and things I never would have been able to do. As terrible as it was, and it was terrible, we, at that time we had to lay off half our company. You know, we were really on a razor's edge for about a year and a half there. But on the other side, it allowed us to transform our company to more technology

first and it allowed all of the employees to spend more time at home. Cause we were a traveling company. People were traveling all the time. So there were some silver linings, but it was a very strange time. So who are your clients usually? Are they, can they be mom and pop hotels or experiences or does it have to be, you know, the big chains? Who are your clients usually you're targeting for those listening on LinkedIn?

Yeah, it would be, you know, the, we started with the big chains, which is not normal. Normally you start with the mom and pops and you work your way up. We, we just happened to start with Hilton and it went well, but we can work with any hotel in the world, any chain scale. We just happened to start with Hilton and it went well, but we can work with any hotel in the world, any chain scale. So obviously if you are a thousand room beach resort, your incremental opportunities are a lot more than a Hampton Inn, but Hampton Inn still have enough opportunity to really improve their bottom line and create the thing that we love about it is with the frontline

employees, you're creating a path for them to make more money. And, you know, as hotel owners and hotel managers know very well, it's very painful when you lose a good performer that is, that is really good with your guests, that your guests connect with. A great way to retain them is pay them more. No one can just pay more. So you pay them a commission on what they sell and you, you hire someone like us to come in and teach them how to do it. Uh, and they can be very successful. I mean, we know a front desk agents in our client base that makes

six figures. Really? Because they're selling so much going to work at the hotels. So you, you can imagine retaining those top sellers is very important and you know, we what fuels us is Is the impact we have on the front line, you know we have we have thought we've trained hundreds of thousands of frontline employees and So we get these stories and some of them are really profound You know one of mine that that has always stayed with me is we were working in another country and there was a front desk agent who came up and told us that they were able to put their kid in a private

school because of the incentives they were making because the public school situation he was being horrifically bullied and there was nothing that they could do about it. So they were able to pay for private school because they bought into the program and they took the training seriously. So we impact people's lives, which makes it spiritually fulfilling as well as financially rewarding. But yeah, to your original question, we can work with any hotel. It doesn't have to be a chain. It can be an independent for sure.

And so you help train the employees, put them through the paces, teach them how to do the upsell, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. put them through the paces, teach them how to do the upsell, et cetera, et cetera. Absolutely. Yeah. There's, we have a learning management system as part of our platform that has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of training videos and they're all short form, you know, the kind of current style of soundbite style. And it'll teach them, they could, the information that's in there, they could become a six figure employee if they just pay attention to it. Cause it's, it's not hard.

It's hard to, we have another phrase we like turning common sense into common clicks, you know, we're not teaching people these extraordinarily difficult or nuanced techniques we're teaching them really practical stuff. They just have to, they just have to apply it and it works. Yeah. I mean, you know, you look at Money on the Table, I think we were talking in the pre-show about how there was a restaurant that we had, that we were doing events at. I host some big dating groups and we were doing big, you know, singles meeting groups. And we'd gone there twice and we'd gone there and literally this restaurant during the middle

of the day on a Saturday was empty for lunch. You know, there was like a very few people and you know, when I walked into their place, I saw that it was largely empty. And for me, that's unused capacity. You know, you're paying, you know, whether you're open, whether you have any clients that day come into your hotel, your restaurant, et cetera, et cetera, you're paying for the employees usually to staff it. You're paying for your business licensing, your taxes, you're paying for the building,

maybe if that's part of your investment or the lease, whatever it is, you're burning that money at that time. And if that room isn't filled or the hotel isn't filled to, you know, 100% capacity, if the restaurant shops inside of things aren't making enough revenue, you know, it affects the bottom line. And I remember, you know, talking with them about how they were positioning themselves and they were complaining about how their costs were working. I'm like, you charge pretty cheap for a plate of food,

and then you never upsell the dessert, and you never upsell the drinks. And a lot of our people over two events there, they were like, hey, is anyone going to come offer me another drink? Is anyone going to come refill this? We talked about how that in the green room, how that happens to me a lot, even with coffee or water. I was just like, hey, can I get another Coke? And, oh, we have about how that in the green room, how that happens to me a lot, you know, even with coffee or water, it was just like, can I get a, can I get another Coke and, oh, we have to charge you for it. That's great.

Cause I don't want to, you know, choke down the steak, you know, without some, the, just to get it down the gullet, you know, can I get, can I get a drink, you know? And that affects the tip. Like I'm an asshole about the tip. I mean, I, I'm a big tip, right? I usually tip 25, 30% sometimes, but I expect to be taken care of. There seems to be this, I don't know where we lost it. I think it was with all these, you know, these iPad platform systems where people

just, they don't do anything that's spectacular or above and beyond customer service and they turn the thing or to you and go, Hey, can I get a tip? And I'm like, I'm not tipping for doing the basics of your job. And it's led to a lot of resentfulness of, of consumers and probably maybe something you guys address where there's a difference between adding value to a customer or just, just phony in the bare minimums. There's a difference between adding value to a customer or just just Phony in the bare minimums then asking for a tip It's like people are like if I was dude if I if I had lived on tips my head would be in a swivel if I worked in a bar or restaurant or a case would be and I can't tell you how many are like so

They're they're they like have those horse goggles where they you know it So they're, they're, they like have those horse goggles where they, you know, it blinders on blinders. It keeps them moving forward. And you're just like, Hey, over here, man, I've been, I'm parsed. I'm, I'm on the ground. Like I'm in the desert, Sahara trying to cross it. Phil. I mean, for me, it's like my wife has parched, which makes it really uncomfortable.

I'll get up and chase the waiter down. But what you're describing is like our biggest pet peeve. And what I don't yet understand is do the servers know that that's what they're doing? Is it intentional or is it a lack of knowledge? Because we're hoping it's a lack of knowledge because we can then teach them not to do that. So our F&B training is really kind of two things. It's how do you manage the table or the relationship across the bar

to maximize the experience and revenue. The other side is how not to irritate your guests. So we actually use that phrase head on a slip. That's one of the courses because you're moving through the environment and you need to make eye contact with your guests every time you go through, because they might be needing you and

When you run through with your head down and you don't look if I don't see them They don't anything that just irritates everyone and so yeah, you're you're right. Something has gone wrong At least in the last five years. I mean you could blame some of it on Colvin We have customers that have told us in hospitality that for the first time ever The people that left the hotels are ever, the people that left the hotels are not coming back to work at the hotels. They've moved on to a different industry. So they have this problem. They're hiring people that have no hospitality experience, sometimes to work in a luxury hotel. That used to be like a career progression. And

now they're hiring someone that worked at 7-Eleven and putting them behind the counter at a Waldorf or a Ritz Carlton, and they're not being properly trained. So that's a big part of the role we play is we get them to understand, you know, use proper English, do not have bad body language, we make eye contact with people. And that's another thing, the young generation that they're, they're not learning how to interact. So people coming out of high school, they don't know how to make eye contact.

They don't have a good handshake. There's a lot of low hanging fruit out there to try and improve the guest experience. Because I'm a guest, I'm a customer, and I have poor experiences, as you're describing, all the time. And it's just very irksome. The customer experience and having good people to serve and upsell you, whatever the case may be, it just makes all the difference. One of the things I do is I usually try and find a lot of times when I go to

restaurants, I don't do it at hotels, I'm traveling quite as much as probably I should, but I usually ask probably a hotel zone, have a concierge that I would know but for me I usually when I go to a new restaurant I ask for the best waiter give me your best waiter and They'll usually you know give me the best waiter that they have sometimes Try and push it like it's and this wasn't your best waiter, but but nice Yeah, and I I'll track names if they gave me good, great service. So when I go, I'll ask for that thing. There's a couple of really nice restaurants here in, in Utah that when I take dates to

them, I know the names of, of the waiters that I'm going to request. And when I reserve, I request those waiters and some of those waiters have been working at those restaurants for decades, but they will give me the best service. If I take my mother out to, you know, mother's day dinner, whatever the case may be, they'll know my mom. They'll remember her name. They'll, they'll talk her up and make her feel really good. Or if it's a date, they'll do the same thing.

And they're, they almost act like wingman, but having good servers and, you know, they'll come and they'll offer whatever. Sometimes it shoots me in the butt. I think the last time I went on a date, one of my favorite friend's servers was giving her the most expensive cups of wine ever. So we had to have a conversation about that. Don't throw Chris under the bus, buddy. Okay. That dinner just tripled in price with the wine you're bringing, bud. You got to, you got to, don't, don't clean the Chris Voss show out, date one. But you know, having those relationships really is important, but those are the guys or gals who, you know, they're, your, your, your drinks are always taken care of.

You know, they're always topped off. They're always, there was upselling, you know, Hey, well, we've got, you know, the dinner's got this special, you know, a lot of people don't like listening to specials, but if somebody knows their thing on the specials, what they're offering and, and then, you know, even then, you know, like I love a waiter who will be like, you know, I'm thinking of the flay and they're like, you know, I'm like, how's that filet? And they can tell them be happy. And they go, you know, I think you probably liked them, you know, that

filet is maybe not getting cooked right tonight for some reason. So those, those sorts of things can make all the difference and customer experiences, everything. I mean, you go back to the places that you feel good at, that make you look good. Like I said, I use mine to look good. And when you're an expensive restaurant, you know the names of the people there, sometimes the owners. There's a French restaurant I know the owner from, and he'll come over and chat up.

And it just makes you look good. It makes you feel good. You're like, hey, I make good choices with my money and I pick great places and you want to go back there. You know, those are the places that you remember. I mean, I have restaurants that haunt me because their food is so good and their service is so good. And I just sit around during the day going, damn, I need to get up there to that joint.

So down is this SaaS service that you guys offer where people can go to certain login and, and utilize your guys' stuff? Yeah, it is SaaS in its delivery model, but when we sign up clients, we have to implement it because it pulls data directly out of the, in a restaurant, the point of sale system or in a front desk, the property management system, and then it visualizes everything that the team is doing. So it's a performance platform and a learning management system. So that you can, if you're a manager in a hotel, you can immediately see who is selling and who is not

if in a restaurant or at the front desk, like in real time or near real time. And it allows you to address those performance gaps immediately. If we look at the leaderboard on a, let say, a dinner shift at a restaurant, like you're describing, and you see one person is selling $300 per check and another is selling $180 per check, that's literally costing you $120 every time that person serves the table. You can address that, train them, get them to watch all the training, bring up their

performance, and it really can have a very significant impact on overall revenue. What you were saying earlier about people, the servers are basically just going through the motions and they've gotten into a mindset a lot of the time that they expect a 20% tip just for walking around the restaurant rather than making you have a great time. And that just reminding them of that, I think, is a big part of it. While we were developing our food and beverage stuff, we did a lot of research in environments. And we found that in almost every restaurant, their training approach is to take a new server and pair them with a veteran server and have them follow them around for two days, and then they release them into the wild.

That's pretty much the extent. So if they're following someone around who's not proactively suggesting and recommending things, they're not probably going to do that. So having a gateway of training for them to come through that teaches them that stuff and then measures whether they're doing it is really important. And it seems like common sense again, but it's not commonplace to actually measure interact coach mentor you know address the performance deficits that may or may not be happening but that's what our platform does it does all that for you and it also allows you to do contests

and you can set goals you you know, in a restaurant, but you could say tomorrow night, our dinner goal per check is, you know, $300 and then you can measure everyone against that goal and see it on your phone. So it's, it really helps managers to gauge their frontline teams in, in a way that will enhance the performance. And that's what you definitely want, enhanced performance. You know, there's so many different things that, times where I've been in a hospitality situation where I'm like, I didn't know I could have gotten that. Or you know, I didn't know there was an upsell for that.

Or somebody will sell me an upsell and I'll be like, oh, I didn't know. Hey, I would definitely want that. You know, would you like to get a little bump up whatever for a bigger room or here's this and you can go, hey, yeah, we'll take that. Sometimes there'll be something special at the restaurant, like a flight or something of either drinks or food and drinks and different things. Hey, would you like to try this? And yeah, maybe it's a, there's going to, I may, maybe it's a resistance to some people are afraid to be told, no, maybe that's one of the problems. Yeah. Frontline, frontline employees in general are fairly fragile. No one likes projection. But that's why we teach them to make a recommendation,

not ask a direct question. Because if I, if I say to you, I saw, I see that you're looking at the whiskey menu, we have a flight that's great, everyone raves about it. But I didn't ask you anything, I just said it. And then you're gonna react to that. And we can predict what those reactions will be and then prepare them to react to that reaction. That's just basic, that's what I'm saying,

that the steps are not super nuanced. It's a process. It's a procedure and you just have to learn it. But to your point, we hear this a lot. People will walk up to the counter at a hotel. They're checking in and someone's checking in right there next to them. And that person will be offered an upgrade and I won't. That's actually a really bad service experience because it's like, what's wrong with me? Why can't I be? I can Bob got the upgrade at the Vegas Hotel, right? Like you want you you want to be treated the same so it's important to have that consistency and make sure that all your employees are

Engaging the guests and telling them what's available, you know I use a lot of catchphrases because when you're training it helps people remember but another one we have is The the best service you can offer your guests is to offer your best services. So if you're not offering and educating your guests on what's available that they might enjoy, you're actually doing them a disservice. And the silver lining on that is that when you do it well, you make a lot more money. I mean, you can, some companies can add 20, 30% to their bottom line by doing this right. Uh, and, and that's without capital expenditure.

That's without having to build another restaurant. That's just when the guest walks in the door, the mindset of the team should be, we want them to be as happy as possible and buy as much as possible. Happy as possible. What happy people buy. I mean, God knows I do. the And yeah, there's an old saying in hospitality. I don't remember where it comes from. The, sorry, there's an old saying in hospitality. I don't remember which company coined it, but it is you want your guests to leave fat, happy and broke. And broke.

Wait, that sounds like my, it wasn't my first nine marriages because I was unhappy. I know it's a joke. Wait, that sounds like my, it wasn't my first nine marriages, because I was unhappy. I don't know, it's a joke. You know, one of the things interesting is the mnemonic attachment of where you attach memory to experience and that lasts with you. So I'll give you an example. There was a restaurant that I tried that I went to. It was very swanky.

They wouldn't let me wear shorts. I had to go back home and get pants. And I was curious to know what it's like and I was reviewing the restaurant. So I was like, you know, I'll wear some pants, I guess, for change. For most people that don't know me, I don't wear pants most of the time. And so, I mean, I wear shorts, but I just don't wear pants. I have a thing with long legs and arms, whatever, anyway. I went to the restaurant and I asked for a coffee and she says, you know, and I think,

I don't know, maybe she assumed that I had some sort of formal, I don't know, that maybe I was, I don't know, maybe I had more money in my pocket. Maybe that's a good way to put it. And she said, oh, coffee, do you, do you like expressos? And I was like, Oh, Oh, you, you have an espresso machine here in Utah. It's really hard to find restaurants that can, they have expresso machines or coffee makers for that matter. Cause the religion here isn't into coffee much. And so I was like, Oh yeah, I'd love expressos. I'll, you know, and so I took a double because that's how I roll at caffeine.

And so there's an upsell there. She just went from an espresso to a double espresso charge. And then I think she knew that they weren't going to be great at espresso. And so she brought me, she brought me a, an X double espresso with a little, I think it was a lemon or orange peel. And she said, hey, this is talking to me by my grandmother. I think she came from Puerto Rico or she came from someplace. It was a place that they kind of did this with their coffee. They put like an orange or lemon peel in it. And I'd never seen that before. And she goes, yeah, yeah, it'll take

the bitterness off the shot and everything. And it'll really enhance the taste. And she goes, yeah, yeah, it'll take the bitterness off the shot and everything and it'll really enhance the taste. And she goes, and she showed me how you do it. She goes, you squeeze it so you get a little bit of the juice out there, you drip it into the espresso and then you just throw the squeezed skin. It's really just the skin of the, you know, it's almost like a, I forget what they call it in chefing and cooking where they, where they, they drag a grinder down the side of the skin of a lemon or orange. So anyway, she, she made this little cut. It was like this little thing and threw it in the thing. Tasted great. I realized that probably their, their espresso isn't quite what it should be in making it. And so she had figured out a way to upsell me and of course, improve my

experience and get bigger tip. And to this day, it's been two or three years since I've been to that restaurant because I don't wear pants. And it was a great restaurant, great food. But to this day, I still remember the experience there. I still remember the restaurant. So it comes up on my little rotary dial in my head where I go, where should I go eat today? I should go to that one restaurant. And like just the other day, I did the orange peel thing. I put some orange peel in the espresso maker in the basket bin and then poured coffee grounds

on top of it to cook. And to this day, two or three years later, I have this mnemonic attachment memory to the orange peel, the up-silled espresso in my experience there. And I mean, even though I had to wear pants, it was a great experience. I think it's Maya Angelou that said people won't remember what you said, they'll remember how you made it feel. We ascribe to that, if you don't create an emotional connection with your guests, you can't expect them to buy more from you.

And you can't expect them to leave you a good review. And this is where, you know, people are afraid that AI is going to take over every job, but the one thing that at least so far, it's not going to be able to do is form a human connection to another human being. That is what fosters those brand loyalty type memories that make people go out of their way to come back to your business because of how you made them feel. And a lot of entrepreneurs and even people we've met in hotels or restaurants, they almost have a fear of offering their guests more. They don't want to be pushy.

And we completely understand that. But as we said, and as you just described with your espresso story, if you don't offer them something that you know they're going to enjoy, you're doing them a disservice. People come to your hotel, they don't know every room type. They don't know what every view out the window is. And the front desk agents do. So if someone's coming in and they're there for their anniversary and you have a sunset view room, offer it to them recommended to them because you're going to have a better experience. It's really like I said, offering your best services is the best way to guard that that trust and brand loyalty relationship with your with your customers and as

Customers we know it's true. It's intuitive. You go somewhere. We're offered like the waiter tells me we have this dish It's unbelievable. It's my favorite dish. It happens to be more expensive. I buy it. I love it I love that he recommended that to me, you know, it's not I'm not offended by it Now if I eat it and it's not good, then we have a different problem. So you got to, you got to deliver on your promises. Maybe that's the, maybe that's the worry. I should upsell the chocolate cake, but I've seen what they did with the chocolate cake and you know, they used the ingredients from last week. Anyway, so, as we go out, give people a final pitch out on how to onboard with your services, how to reach out, how to find out more about you.

I mean, we've had this great discussion that I think any company can use in any field, whether you're in hospitality or not, you know, taking care of the customer, making sure the experience is there, monitoring customer experience, et cetera, et cetera. Yep. Yep. I mean, you could on LinkedIn, they could reach out to me directly. But if you go to our website, there is a demo link where you can put a little bit of information

in and we'll reach out and we'll show you the tech. We'll talk you through it. You know, we have, like I said, we have over 2500 hotels worldwide. So we're really good at this. We're the best in the world at frontline performance management. And if you have a business that's in frontline, you have frontline employees serving your guests, we can definitely help you. So yeah, you can reach out to me directly or go to our website and fill out the contact

form. Be great. Pete Slauson Thank you very much for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Chris Foss Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Pete Slauson And thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress fortress Chris Foss Chris Foss won the tick-tock any and all those crazy plays in it

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time and that should have us