Published on June 17, 2022
Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) delivery excellence team wanted to understand how Indian Hotels (IHCL) manages its operational processes and controls to instill a culture that is helpful in delivering a consistent customer experience to customers, across all locations. The TCS team wanted to specifically understand how IHCL deploys standard practices across all hotels, with varying levels across different brands and how customer experience is delivered across all touchpoints.
To address these queries, TBExG, on March 8, 2022, facilitated a best practice sharing session on operations excellence with Ian Dubier, Area Director - Hyderabad and GM - Taj Krishna Hyderabad.
Elaborating on the service philosophy of IHCL, Mr Dubier mentioned that the word Taj is an acronym for: Trust – providing safety and delivering what is promised; Awareness – of customers’ needs and adapt offerings according to them; Joy – demonstration of joy in what it does. IHCL endeavours to imbibe this service philosophy through trainings and R&R. There is a lot of communication around demonstration on these values which in turn helps to strengthen the value system in associates. He further talked about importance of picking up verbal/nonverbal communication and working out solutions that works in the best interest of the customer (anticipatory service) and detailed out other critical elements that support customer centric culture at IHCL.
On March 9, 2022, Sireesha Chandana, Associate Vice President - Learning & Development and Employee Engagement, conducted a session on L&D and employee engagement for the TCS team. Sireesha touched briefly on the legacy, culture, and the service philosophy of the organisation. She elaborated in detail on Tajness i.e., a term coined by IHCL to articulate a feeling of positive experience, Taj guests have been consistently experiencing for decades now. While Tajness is what IHCL delivers, its foundation is based on values and legacy of the Tata group. Operational processes such as recruitment, training, recognition, welfare and communication helps strengthen a culture where every employee thinks of their guest as a centre of their universe were further detailed out.
Participant Speak
Articulation effectiveness, daily customer feedback review and analysis, root cause analysis rigor, focus on behavioral skills training, thank you emails, buddy system, empowerment at an individual level, differentiated customer experience with well-defined SOPs and systems delivering 360-degree view of customer were some of the learnings. We will consider some of these for adoption within TCS. Thank you for arranging the sessions for us, it helped focus on the possibilities. And thanks to the IHCL team for a great learning session.
— K. Subramanian, Head - Delivery Excellence, Tata Consultancy Services