Delaware North is one of the largest privately held hospitality companies in the world. It has global operations at high-profile places such as sports and entertainment venues, national and state parks, destination resorts and restaurants, airports, and regional casinos. Delaware North has annual revenue of $3 billion in the sports, travel hospitality, restaurants and catering, parks, resorts, gaming, and specialty retail industries.
The Challenge
To enhance its customer service experience, Delaware North created GuestPath®, its proprietary customer experience, continuous improvement, and service delivery program focused on the betterment of the guest experience and operational process at Delaware North establishments. One key component of GuestPath® is its role in customer service delivery and employee training processes.
Delaware North’s unit leadership is responsible for guiding their associates in delivering first-class service and GuestPath® provides various platforms to accomplish this mission. One such platform is the GuestPath® Validations process, whereby unit leadership educates associates through various methodologies including observing associate/guest interactions, role play and associate on-shift meetings by observing and documenting their performance against the company’s standards. Leadership can then recognize a job well done and coach associates in areas that need improvement.
For years, the company used paper forms for its validations process. This method was time consuming, used up plenty of company resources, and didn’t provide visibility into the performance of the leadership conducting the validations nor the associate being validated.
The Solution & Result
To reduce paperwork, improve transparency, and provide enterprise-wide reporting, Delaware North’s GuestPath® division went on the hunt for a digital solution for its validation process.
They needed something that was simple to use, cost-effective, easily implemented, and available to use offline. After ruling out custom app development, which was not cost efficient, and not being able to otherwise find an existing app that could meet their needs, Delaware North eventually found Certainty Software.
To get started, the GuestPath® team provided the Certainty Software team with all their original paper validation forms that they wanted to use, which the Certainty Software team quickly implemented. Once completed, Delaware North was impressed with the adaptability of Certainty, its flexibility, and reporting functionality.
A few training webinars later, and now hundreds of Delaware North leaders are using Certainty, which they have co-branded as the GuestPath® Validation APP, with thousands of associates.
With their Certainty GuestPath® Validation app now in place, GuestPath® associates are saving tons of time as they no longer need to deal with paper forms and data input. They are also saving money on printing, mailing, collecting, and paper storage costs.
Most importantly, the Certainty GuestPath® Validation app provides an enterprise view of associate performance not previously seen. With the old paper system, there was no accountability, there was no reporting capability from location to location, and no one knew where a lot of the completed forms ended up.
Delaware North is rolling out the app to all of its subsidiaries within the next year, and sees great potential for the software internationally, as well.
