Health Information Technology

After reading so many articles about customer service, motivation and evidence based management, I know that all of these are essential for a company to excel. Both of the articles are very similar and talk about the same company and that is the reason why I chose to combine them in one post. The articles are very interesting and I learned a few things I did not know about Harrah’s Entertainment. Many entertainment companies offer flashy décor inside and out. This can be seen on the Las Vegas strip or downtown Reno. Flashing lights, large projection screens, commercials and billboards all focus on entertainment and rightly so. Entertainment such as shows, movies, restaurants and shopping provides 3 times larger revenue for casinos than gambling. Such must see properties would generate good revenue only for the first 2 years and would decrease thereafter due to customer service issues. People seek these properties and view the shows, but after a while they seek other flashy properties, because they don’t build a loyal customer base. The properties that have good customer service build a loyal customer base. However, those that like the thrill of gaming would not enjoy this type of properties, because they bring family and kids. Harrah’s on the other hand focuses on distinguishing itself with gaming and customer service. In order to do this Harrah’s had to know its customer base and focus on providing exceptional service. Service starts with employees and in order to provide that extra level of service Harrah’s would have to reward its people. Harrah’s strategy was to focus on people, similar to that of SAS and Nordstrom. They introduced incentive plans for non management. The plan would reward employees for improvements in customer service as well as let employee know that they are the heart of their business. By doing this they showed their employees that they are respected and that they are willing to offer them rewards for their service. This would increase customer service matrix and motivation, but how far could Harrah’s go with this. Can customer service be improved infinitely? Also, Harrah’s was not sure if this newly introduced incentive plan was an efficient way to make Harrah’s a better company. Harrah’s was ensuring that its customers were treated like  royalty, that their employees were an asset to them and they used evidence based management to introduce frequent customer rewards programs. By doing all of the above, Harrah’s would benefit in many ways by building a loyal customer base, by learning customer behaviors and having a happy workforce. This happy workforce would be much more efficient and would turn themselves into assets no other entertainment company has. With support from Phil Satre and Gary Loveman, Harrah’s became one of the most reputable entertainment companies in the world. The move that focused on customers and not on entertainment like other gaming properties have would appear very risky and others saw Harrah’s as a failing giant. Instead, Harrah’s was building competitive advantage over other casinos that would have the most loyal customer base of any casino in the world. The move, though risky, would be seen as one that gave Harrah’s glory. As described in the articles by Gary Loveman, Harrah’s had to know its customer base in order to offer them this exceptional customer service. As customer service can be only improved so much and if we don’t know customers we cannot be successful. That is why they introduced Total Gold Rewards that would offer customers free food, rooms and money to play in return for them giving Harrah’s their information such as gaming habits, money spent, residential information and frequent surveys. This information would be stored into a database that would be researched by analysts and provide Harrah’s with valuable information about their customer base. This would also allow them to adjust their service where they needed it. One surprising discovery was that most of their customers were locals that stopped by to their casino after work. Also they found out through surveys that their customers who said that were happy increased their spending by 24% per year and the customers that were not happy decreased it by 10%. They found out that this data mining would allow them to do wonders and they started collecting even more information and analyzing even more data. Soon after many other companies followed. Today we see frequent shopping cards, frequent flyer miles cards and numerous others that are following the footsteps of pioneer in data mining. Harrah’s became a successful company in the midst of change in the entertainment industry. They chose adaptation unlike that of their rivals and succeeded. They truly mastered the effectiveness which is evident through the use of their rewards program by all in the entertainment industry. While other casinos adapted to Harrah’s ideas of a rewards programs and data mining, Harrah’s continues to focus on customer base rather than on its facilities.