Rolling In The Clean

Crazy, but fun.” That’s how 26-year-old Shawn Smith describes his job. Smith is the hotel services manager for Harrah’s Atlantic City in New Jersey, which includes about 140,000 square feet of gaming space and 1,630 guest rooms.

A typical workday starts at 8:30 a.m. Smith, who is in charge of housekeeping, environmental services, wardrobe and health club departments, checks to see “what’s going on” with each department that particular day. A pre-shift “buzz session” with employees begins at 9 a.m.

“We go over the day, the promotions, what show is on that night, which restaurants are open, what guests are coming in,” Smith says.

Smith also makes note of open guest rooms that need to be cleaned. If the housekeeping department is short-staffed that day, housekeepers have the option of taking on additional rooms. The housekeepers usually clean 14 credits worth of rooms — a workload established through the workers’ union. Rooms are assigned a number of credits based on size and type.

“We sell [rooms] back to employees at double,” Smith says. “It’s a pay incentive to take an extra room. Employees basically get a receipt and an extra amount on their paycheck.”

After the pre-shift meeting, Smith attends a hotel operations meeting with other department managers. He divides the rest of the day between spending time on the floor with staff, working in his office, and sometimes even working at the front desk or parking cars, if necessary.

Spending time in different departments helps him connect with customers and discover the things that make guests happy.

“I’ll be at the front desk sometimes and hear people complain,” he says. “They might say what they liked about a competing property and what they don’t like about ours.”

Hearing guests’ comments might cause Smith to look into upgrading Harrah’s room amenities, for example. It is important to stay ahead of the competition.

Customer focus
“You’ll notice when you walk in the front doors everyone will say, ‘Hi,’ ‘Good afternoon,’ ‘Good morning,’” Smith says. “No one will be working with [his or her] head down.”

All employees go through “Harrah’s University” classroom training, which includes FOCUS training, the company’s core customer service program. FOCUS stands for:

Fast and friendly
Offers and rewards
Chance to win
U know me
Spotless.

Employees are encouraged to get to know guests by name, and be friendly and helpful.

“If a guest asks a restroom attendant where they can get a cup of coffee, the attendant doesn’t just tell the guest or point,” Smith says. “He or she walks the guest to where [he or she] needs to go.”

In addition to tourists, Harrah’s has many regular guests. Employees get to know regular customers and become familiar with their needs.

“There is one lady who comes in and wants everything new,” he says. “She wants the bedspread in its original packaging.” The packaged bedspread is in the room when she checks in so she can see that it is new. A housekeeper comes to her room shortly after, unwraps the bedspread and makes the bed.

“We try to accommodate people the best we can,” Smith says. “If you’ve got to go out of your way, you’ve got to go out of your way.”

Harrah’s offers turndown service for overnight guests. Smith says housekeepers fold bed covers back for an average of 300 beds a night. They also leave guests two bottles of water and a box of truffles, for those staying in high-end rooms.

Occasionally, employees have to deal with guests who try to get free amenities and services by manufacturing complaints.

“Guests complain, and sometimes I have to deal with figuring out whether it is real or fabricated,” says Barbara Murray, housekeeping floor supervisor. Murray has been serving Harrah’s customers for nearly 25 years.

One day, a guest called from his room to complain to housekeeping that his wife had stepped on a piece of chewing gum that was on the carpet. He was concerned about his wife because she allegedly had been exposed to the saliva in the gum. Murray went to the guest’s room to discuss the problem.

“When I got there, I asked him where the gum was,” she says. “He had it rolled in a ball, sitting on a piece of paper on top of the TV.”

She wondered why — if the guest had been so concerned about touching the gum — he had rolled it in a ball and placed it on top of the television.

“First, I apologized to the man and his wife for the gum on the carpet,” Murray says. “Then I asked him what we could do for him. He wanted free dinner for two and his room [compensated] for two nights.”

Murray knew her boss was not going to agree to the guest’s request. She was able to offer the guest $50, which he finally accepted.

She says the classes Harrah’s offers employees on customer service help, but she gets most of her experience in handling guests from “doing.”

“A lot of it is good common sense,” she says. “It’s best to smile and apologize.”

Harrah’s measures customer service with the help of a research group that administers customer-satisfaction surveys. Employees see weekly and quarterly reports of customer-service scores, divided by department. If any department gets a score higher than 103 percent on a quarterly report, employees in all departments get cash rewards.

Hire the smile
Smith says finding qualified, up-beat and positive people who can deliver the level of customer service Harrah’s requires is a challenge.

There are approximately 250 housekeeping employees who clean guest rooms and 150 workers who clean public areas. Attrition, department transfers, medical leave, personal leave and vacations cause a “constant flow of people,” and open positions, he says.

Housekeeping candidates fill out an application and go through a pre-screening process that includes an assessment test called “better people inventory,” which Smith calls “an SAT test for housekeepers.”

Candidates who score well on the test are screened by the human resources department, and then an assistant manager.

Smith says the screening process does not necessarily tell him whether or not an applicant is a good fit for the job.

“If they’re up-beat and positive, you can teach anyone to clean,” he says. “I hire the smile.”

Constructive competition
Casino operators often promote new construction or renovations to draw customers to properties.

“It’s a general standard that casinos go through renovations every three to four years,” Smith says. “We’re renovating aggressively to stay on top.”

In two years, more than 1,000 guest rooms at Harrah’s Atlantic City property were renovated.

“We gut the rooms and it’s like getting a whole new tower,” he says. “Having a brand-new room is great. You can tell guests, ‘You’re the first person staying in this room.’”

In May, Harrah’s opened the top two floors of one of its guest towers. The new rooms have marble entryways and wood floors. Smith says new areas rarely present new cleaning challenges.

“Cleaning something newer, not older, is really not a cleaning challenge,” he says. “Sometimes you don’t know what to expect until it’s done ... you worry about a lot of ‘what-ifs.’”

Before the new guest rooms opened, Smith studied, then followed, the wood flooring manufacturer’s cleaning instructions: vacuum to remove debris and use a slightly damp microfiber flat mop to clean the floor.

Housekeepers use the mop’s built-in solution tank to mist a hardwood cleaner on surfaces. The neutral-pH cleaner is designed for polyurethane-coated, unwaxed floors.

“Our goal is to maintain the floor’s original look, 24/7, no matter what type of floor it is,” he says.

More on the floor
Keeping public-areas floors free of debris and dirt is a matter of timing.

Stone surfaces cover floors in busy and hard-to-get-to areas. The property’s main lobby is a blend of marble and granite. Granite lines bar areas; marble is in restaurants and in front of revolving doors.

Harrah’s has a “marble team” — a group of workers certified through a stone floor manufacturer — that cleans granite and marble throughout the facility.

“They do cleaning at different times of the week, all the time,” Smith says. “You’ve got to have people who can easily adjust their schedule to get the job done.”

Once a year, workers resurface lobby floors using a diamond floor machine. The floor blend of marble and granite creates a time-consuming maintenance task for workers. For example, when using diamond pads on marble, granite pieces must be protected with tape. The team uses a crystallization method daily, which includes the use of steel wool pads to restore shine on the marble.

When the weather is rainy and windy, water blows onto marble entries through front revolving doors. When there is a lot of foot traffic, entrance mats cannot catch all the water. When needed, Smith assigns a cleaning worker to stand by the entrance with a mop to control water.

Another challenge: carpeted casino floors bordered with marble pathways. When deep cleaning carpets using wet extraction, water gets tracked onto marble, which creates potential for slips and falls.

Smith found a solution about two months ago by purchasing some low-moisture extraction units to maintain carpet until there is an opportunity for a deep clean.

“The carpet dries in less than five minutes,” he says.

Workers use ride-on carpet extractors in the ballroom and concourse areas.

Housekeeping: a support group
The importance of a clean facility is emphasized in Harrah’s core customer service training program for all employees. The ‘S’ in FOCUS, after all, stands for spotless.

“Cleanliness is customer service,” Smith says. “[Cleaning workers] are more of a support group for the rest of the staff.”