Oak Plaza trains staff

 

The success of a business is largely synonymous with the training it gives its staff, says Ms. Hazel Gumpo, the General Manager of the Oak Plaza Group of Hotels in Accra.

She explains that for a business to survive the demands of today’s competitive market, its staff must understand the importance of the role they play as individuals in meeting desired results. “Success,” she said, “is not hard work but a life-style.”

It is in this regard, therefore, that she attributes the thriving strides of the Oak Plaza Hotels to the periodic training and re-training programmes it organises for its staff -- who go ahead to deliver nothing but the best services to clients.

Ms. Gumpo said this in an interview last Friday, at the end of a training programme organised for staff on best practices in ensuring customer care and satisfaction.

Christened the Oak Host Programme, it among other things exposed staff to how crucial their individual roles are to the group of hotels’ success, and Ghana as an African host nation.

Among the topics treated were aspects of “Moments of Truth”, defined as: “Any episode in which a customer comes into contact with an organisation and gains an impression of its services”.  Ultimately, these experiences determine whether or not they will continue doing business with the organisation or not. 

Teams were encouraged to list these experiences from the time guests open up the Oak website, the reservation process, to the meeting at the airport, the welcome at the car park by the security guards, the door men or indeed the front-office executives; and the comfort of the bed linen, the functionality of all gadgets, their full meal experience etc.

  With that, the conclusion was made that all were in one way or another MANAGERS of the MoT that they were in charge of -- and as such had to work on ensuring that they were positive.

She said the importance of building relationships with clients as a means of understanding their needs was another highlight of the programme.

Here, staff were given practical skills carrying out intelligent conversations with guests so as to solicit information that can be used to meet their needs. To achieve this, staff were taught about the need to not only know their product, but also places of interest in the city and the nation as a whole.   

Staff were encouraged not to see themselves as Oak hosts only but Ghana hosts, and indeed the only Africans that some of our international guests will ever meet; and as such Afro-hosts -- ambassadors of our great continent.

Touching on the importance of the Oak Host training programme, Ms. Gumpo -- who doubled as a facilitator, explained that in the hospitality industry “much of what matters concerns the engagement that a service provider has with a customer”.

Ms. Gumpo, an AMSCO (African Management Services Company) manager seconded to the group under a United Nations Development Programme, announced that a documentary will soon air on television to trumpet the products and services offered by the Oak Plaza Group of hotels.

For her part, the Sales & Marketing Manager Mrs. Semira Anku added that the training programme was to ensure that Staff of the hotel are well-equipped and strategically positioned to deliver better services to “our large clientele whose loyalty is the reason we’re still in business”.

She thus urged the staff to take keen interest in the training in order to better themselves, entreating other stakeholders in the hospitality and tourism sector to follow.

 

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