If ever there was a time when tribal casinos couldn’t afford a misstep in delivering outstanding customer service, today’s competitive gaming environment is it.

Service can make a casino stand out from the pack and become an attractive place to play. But the pack is growing ever larger as states expand their gaming offerings to boost tax revenues.

For Indian-owned casinos serious about using service as a long-term success tactic, there is something that can give them an advantage—service delivery gap analysis. The service delivery gap is the difference between the kind of service a casino wants to deliver and the service it actually provides. That gap can be all the convincing a potential customer needs to give the competition a try. Success comes from analyzing and narrowing the gap or closing it altogether.

Following are five steps casinos can take to improve their customer service delivery gap.

1. Start SMART

Gap analysis starts with an examination of the casino’s service standards. The first mistake many properties make is not having service standards at all. If they do have standards, they are not SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound). The “S” portion is important because specific standards are the cornerstone of guest service measurement, management and improvement.

For example, if the standard is to “be friendly,” how can that be measured and improved upon? It’s too subjective.

2. Identify the Gap

The next step is to take a critical look at the difference between where the casino’s service is now and where the property wants to be.

The gap analysis should be done by a third party to remove bias. Managers should not be assigned this task. Let’s say one standard is that employees smile at guests. Everyone smiles when the general manager walks by, and the GM thinks the casino is meeting that standard. But is that really the typical guest experience?

3. Roll Out Improvements

Every business has gaps, but the key is identifying them and then doing something to narrow the gap. That’s the first step in an improvement process. When it comes to improvement, most casinos think of training their employees to provide service based on the standards. But a better approach is to educate and enlighten employees about service expectations. Don’t provide training that’s based on lectures. Make it fun, entertaining and participant-centered. People learn by doing. They learn and retain more information when the process is enjoyable.

If employees are reluctant to participate in training, that’s a warning that the casino has failed to create a fun learning environment. Not everyone will be overjoyed with the experience, but if training is misguided, it can do more harm than good.

 
4. Take A Hard Look At Your Employees

Are employees happy? I’m serious about this, because happy employees provide better service.

Employees are unhappy because of internal factors they can learn to control, not because of something external that they cannot influence. Casinos often think they must offer incentives, bonuses or pay raises to make people happy. Research shows that those actions have little impact.

Being happy comes from the inside, and management can help employees figure that out. What do we usually see when we turn on a television newscast? The vast majority of news is negative—murder, disasters and crises. After absorbing all that, the mind sees things from a negative perspective. It’s easy to assume that all the bad news reflects the norm for that day.

But if people learn to change what they focus on, it alters their perspective. Some people have an attitude of gratitude no matter what happens to them. Casinos need to help employees learn to find the positive moments in each day.

5. Think Differently

Back in the old days, all casinos had to do was open their doors and get out of the way. Comment cards provided sufficient customer feedback. Those days are long gone, and casinos have not changed with the times.

A key element of service delivery gap analysis is ongoing feedback from customers about their gaming experience. Feedback keeps the gap narrow or closed. Comment cards are useless in today’s era of rapid communications. Yet, casinos continue to use those dinosaurs. Guests are more accustomed to the internet and such social media sites as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, where they vent about their poor casino experience for hundreds of people to see.

Casinos must approach feedback in a different manner. They must embrace real-time online guest experience measurement. Technology exists that allows guests to share their feedback with the property rather than the world at large. In addition to receiving feedback quickly, this technology gives casinos the opportunity to create real-time service recovery.

When casinos respond to comments on the web, it’s like trying to put rain back in the clouds. By the time they find the post, the problem has occurred and the guest is nowhere to be found. But when casinos make it easy for a customer to share directly with them, they often can fix the problem before the guest leaves the property. Now that’s what I call closing the gap.

Quality guest service is the only sustainable competitive advantage casinos have, and shrinking the service delivery gap is a move in the right direction. It’s a move toward long-term success.