ROI On Internal Casino Improvement Programs Can Be Determined by Measuring Levels of Guest Advocacy, Says Robinson & Associates, Inc.

Annapolis, MD (PRWEB) July 13, 2007 -- For decades, casino managers pondering an internal improvement program to boost their property's performance have struggled to determine the return on investment and now Annapolis, Maryland-based Robinson and Associates, Inc., (http://www.advocatedevelopmentsystem.com) says there is a way to calculate that kind of ROI.

"For more than a decade, our company has been helping casinos improve their guest service and I've always hated the ROI question," says Martin R. Baird, Robinson & Associates' chief executive officer. "The chief financial officer always wants to know what the casino can expect to get in the way of a financial return on the money spent on improvement. I'm pleased so say that there now is a way to answer that question. ROI can be calculated by launching internal improvements that lead to the creation of guest advocates."

Baird offers the following tips on guest advocacy and ROI:

Measure the Right Thing. To determine ROI, casinos must stop measuring customer satisfaction and measure how many guest advocates they have, Baird says. "There is good news from research published by Harvard University and further studied by the London School of Economics," Baird explains. "Researchers found that by tracking customer advocate levels, they could arrive at a very high correlation to the future growth of a business. The higher the level of advocates, the more likely the business was to grow."

Advocacy Is Not the Same As Satisfaction. "Advocacy relates to a very specific and highly studied form of measurement," Baird says. "If you hear the word advocate used as a generic term for guest satisfaction in gaming, understand that guest advocates and satisfied guests are not the same thing. Advocacy and satisfaction are worlds apart."

Launch A System of Internal Improvement to Create More Advocates. Advocates are created when casino employees behave in a certain manner and it takes a system of improvement to get them to display those behaviors, Baird notes. "It takes a system to move people from how they behave on the job now to how you want them to consistently behave," Baird says. "All employees smile when the general manager walks by. So how do you get them to repeat that simple, basic behavior with each guest? Guests appreciate smiling employees and that is one behavior that can help turn them into advocates."

Help Employees Understand Why Improvement is Important. "Much of the resistance to improvement programs comes from team members who are not clear on why the improvement is being done," Baird says. "At a casino that is already successful, it's hard to get employees to understand that it's all too easy to fall from the mountaintop."

Determine the Correlation Between Improvement and Future Growth. "The research published by Harvard found that in some industries, the correlation between the measurement of advocates and future growth was as high as 98 percent," Baird says. "In gaming, I have found that it's lower, but a mid-80 percent correlation from tracking advocacy is better than any other measurement tool available."

Advocacy has a high, measurable correlation to future growth, Baird says: "And there you have it -- an ROI based on proven, definable results."

Robinson & Associates, Inc., is a global customer service consulting firm for the gaming industry. It helps casinos determine their Advocate Index, a number that indicates the extent to which properties have guests who are willing to be advocates. The company then implements its Advocate Development System in combination with the proven methodology of Advocate Index and best business practices to help casinos create more guest advocates and chart a course for growth and profitability. Robinson & Associates may be reached by phone at 480-991-6420, by e-mail at mbaird@casinocustomerservice.com or via its Web sites at www.advocatedevelopmentsystem.com and www.casinocustomerservice.com.

Robinson & Associates is a member of the Casino Management Association and an associate member of the National Indian Gaming Association.

Contact:

Martin R. Baird

Robinson & Associates, Inc.

http://www.advocatedevelopmentsystem

http://www.casinocustomerservice.com

480-991-6420

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