I know I know…I am totally having fun with the 2.0 thing.  Don’t worry it is not the title, I promise.  But I do think it will exist!  I am not sure what you are going with for the title of this position, those of you actually *doing* this.  So far, in the capacities I have interacted with guests I am not too far from an “online concierge” for specific properties.  That being said, I was trying to identify what makes a good “online guy”.  What are your thoughts?

So far, after brief pontification… this is what I have:

1_ Fierce, undying, dyed in wool love for and belief in the hotel, product, brand, business, etc.

I think this is vital.  I don’t think you can sit and be part of a conversation that irks you, or that your heart is not in.  I think you might try… it could be like a relationship you want to work but you just know that can’t.  I am not sure about you, but there definitely has to be some redemption and true love for the properties I represent.  With a couple in specific, there is drive it in to the ground go to the mat love. You might be able to lose yourself in the fun that is social media, but then you may get to far from your job and positioning and maintaining your hotel’s needs (or product etc).  Too many people “play” social media.  You need someone trying to win for your hotel.. earnestly and deeply.

2_ Ability to conjure and work with words eloquently, concisely, and with precision

Concise?  Me?  Uh oh.  Managing positive and negative reviews is a daunting task.  One single property I work for (w/ outlets) has over 145 reviews in the first 9 months of operations on YELP ALONE.  This is not only overwhelming (given their 5 review response limit per day) this is incredibly frightening.  You can’t really carbon copy reviews… you have to respond individually.  They are so nuanced, and so individual… reviewers may react poorly to a “stock response”, versus not having written them at all.  Some yelpers have even ganged up on businesses that didn’t appropriately respond to their needs.  Whatever the case, when you are replying to reviews they are very nuanced, personal conversations that need to be real.  Social Media isn’t only about transparency, it’s about being honest, and providing a human face for your brand.  Someone replying with cut and paste isn’t going to, ahem, cut it.

3_ Someone able to stay focused in a relatively unstructured environment (wild west of job
responsibilities and duties)

This job is new.  It is also fairly vaguely scripted.  Often times by the time you are deep into an idea or “campaign” you realize it isn’t as relevant as you hoped and you take a different direction.  It is a long term process keeping many, many different balls in the air.  It is incredibly important to create some level of structure or you will be wayward in this e-stream of riptide currents taking you to worthless, time consuming websites, or off topic fluff and minutia that hasn’t an impact or relevancy to your task at hand.  Organization is paramount, and difficult to do with such a new world of floating job tasks and fluid long term projects.  If you can’t keep good notes, your dates in order, and target tasks by hierarchical importance, it is going to be a disaster.  Remember, your employer may trust you deeply but you have to have *something* to show them your activities.  You may have freedom, but you have to relate your importance and justify the labour expense.

4_ Ability to multitask at a dysfunctionally and depressingly high level

You need to start 15 projects, answer 40 questions, be on 2 different phones in 3 different time zones before 8am.  Maybe that’s just me… but you do need to have a terse organizational mind coupled with an ability to stay mentally organized as 75% of the stuff you are directed to do gets put on hold to do other stuff.  I feel like I am constantly coming back to projects I have been working on *forever*.  I have a “create new projects” social media side, a “maintain” social media side, “innovate” social media side, and a “catch up, catch up now!!!” side.  Between that and nap time is brainstorming time.  I need a couple house wipeboards to cover all of it.  In fact, I need to rework that because there are a lot more things to multitask.  Like there should be a Q&A hour from confused people constantly asking a statement, “I don’t get twitter?”, with a rising intonation.

You need to be on the ball, and you can’t forget what’s in the air.  When the ball drops in the conversation in social media, there is something worse than becoming irrelevant and going unnoticed… it is the negative effect it can have on your brand.  When people want to talk and you aren’t answering your door, they can think it pretty rude.

So once you start, it might be wise to notice that you can’t stop.  I mean.. you can.  Of course you can.  But there are always consequences.

So that is why I think this is going to build and grow, and eventually end up property level for most majour chains or properties.  Just my two cents.  But if it is true….

Add your own thoughts!.  I wouldn’t mind to know what you think?  We are going to have to give HR a job description at some point, aren’t we?  =)

About Michael

One Response to “The new job description – Concierge 2.0 – What makes an excellent brand manager/hotel SMO?”

  1. Brian Hayashi

    Well…having built a e-concierge personal shopping service for 240+ of the nation’s largest shopping centers, I have a couple of thoughts.

    First, one must have a willingness to keep one’s ear to the ground. Especially in this economy, you not only have to know who’s still open, but you’ve got to know when restaurants change their hours of operation. At many high end hotels 30% of the information on local restaurants, retailers etc is out of date, and there’s nothing worse than sending a guest to a business that’s closed. As a result, many hotels resort to sending guests to the same restaurant over and over, not because it’s going to be good for the guest, but because the hotel knows the restaurant is still open and doesn’t want to comp the guest if there’s a disconnect.

    Second, candidates must be comfortable communicating with guests in their preferred mode of communication. Today, that means text messaging. Let me tell you, training concierges on the nuances of text messaging can be scary. There are some real issues to be faced when individuals perceive they must be as facile as their grandchildren at texting. There’s a lot of pushback when they’re asked to go from one-on-one interactions to a Blackberry-fueled 24/7 lifestyle.

    I do think there are some Twitter etiquette issues to be hashed out in the real world. There are many bits of conventional wisdom that are today held to be non-negotiable, but when trying to convey a consistent experience across multiple touchpoints, may in fact end up being negotiable.

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