MEDALLIA
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You are about to hire a new “floor attendant” (as they are often called) to join your house-
keeping team. In this case his name is Jacob. He is 22 and has been working for a janitorial
service company before coming to you. He applied because he is very interested in fitness
but was happy to see a cleaning job available as he has no fitness experience other than
working out.
Let’s look through Jacob’s eyes at two different ways to think about his job. First is a typical
approach to the Floor Attendant role. Jacob is given his new position description and reads
the main job responsibility – “Floor Attendant: Your chief responsibility is to keep the gym
orderly and clean.” With this as the Chief Responsibility you could easily write a set of sub-
responsibilities and some duties that would roll up to this.
But did we miss an opportunity here already? The opportunity to engage everyone to deliver
great customer experience is everywhere. Your ability to get minimum wage or near minimum
wage positions to feel great about their role BEYOND the money is critical to a great staff
and member experience.
Let’s take another approach. Jacob is given his position description and reads – “Floor Host:
Your chief responsibility is to ensure the members get to know you and that they notice how
clean and orderly the gym is at all times.” What changes here when you start to think about
the sub-responsibilities and duties? More importantly, what changes for Jacob when he
thinks about his role in the gym? What KPIs might be managed to understand if this is
happening?
I use this example because I believe housekeeping is one of the most under-appreciated,
under-engaged and under-utilized assets for creating a great member experience.
A great customer experience initiative has both broad intake of customer feedback and data
(i.e. voice of customer at volume and an understanding of the entire member experience),
and broad uptake of that data (the use of member feedback and metrics by the many, not
the few). If Jacob knows that he is expected to take part in helping people feel like they
belong, then customer experience information is now relevant to him. This is critical in
getting broad uptake. Jacob can accept responsibility for Housekeeping Friendliness, Gym
cleanliness and even Availability for Assistance. Jacob will engage and thrive in this role if
he has the opportunity to see actual member comments about how good he is and how
thorough he is.
I frequently press organizations to rewrite and bring to life their position descriptions. When
you do this in a fashion that makes customer experience data relevant for every position, you
have created a mechanism for engaging everyone on your team into the purpose of your
organization.
Blair McHaney
CEO Clubworks/Medallia Sister Company
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