Think of guest displeasure.
One of the ways it happens is when Arun, the housekeeping executive gets 3 calls, back to back.
203 requested a dental kit, 402 – a goose-feather pillow, and 302 – 2 coffee kits with sugar-free sachets.
He then gets 5 more requests on the phone – it's one of those high occupancy days.
While he’s on the phone taking those calls, 3 other guests are now frustrated because the housekeeping phone line is jammed.
When Arun and his colleagues step away for a quick chore, the phones are ringing away without an answer.
Finally, the guests in 302 get the dental kit they never asked while the goose-feather pillows get delivered to 602 and a bunch of other orders are either missed or delayed.
Running a hotel is a tough job and it gets worse when the staff has to keep a mental track of multiple guest requests.
One way to fix this is to write Post-it notes in real-time when the guest calls and move them through a 3-column board that can help track order progress.
If Arun is out delivering items to guests, his colleague Shyam can simply look at what's to be done and take up the open TO-DOs.
Now imagine if this could be a little more automated via software :
- The guest requests land up in “To Do” – **automatically!**
- All Arun has to do is take up the task himself or even assign it to one of his teammates, say Shyam – who is on the floor where the order came from.
- On assignment, the task gets moved to the “In Progress” column.
- Shyam gets notified automatically, fulfils the task and closes it – marking it as “Done”.
A few positive side-effects happen when this is all technically done:
- Nobody has to deal with the phone – the guest can simply place the order by accessing the housekeeping or IRD menu via your hotel’s guest app.
- We know Shyam was assigned to the task and we can measure how long it takes to fulfill this order – measuring it against an SLA set by the General Manager.
- In case the Housekeeping staff is busy or away – the order can automatically get escalated to the HOD or even the GM – before getting delayed.
No more jammed phone lines or scrambled orders in Arun’s head.
This is the Kanban way of doing work – where "Kanban" means "visual signal" or "card" in Japanese.
It was invented by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota – in the 1940s – to improve manufacturing efficiency and manage inventory levels in Toyota's factories.
In the early 2000s, the Kanban method was introduced in software engineering making the software development process highly efficient and organised.
When my Utkarsh and I first thought about building Haven, we had gathered a good amount of understanding of how hotel operations were being run at many hotels.
One question that stood out – why aren’t people using Kanban boards? Even if they did use some form of it – it was all paper/whiteboard driven and not digital at all.
So we built the Kanban workflow at the heart of Haven. Hotels using Haven now utilise a Kanban workflow for Housekeeping and IRD – and soon we are bringing this method for them to manage their restaurant orders as well as engineering tickets.
.png)
Haven’s Kanban workflow makes work visual, incorporates accountability and makes team collaboration much more effective than traditional methods.
More clarity, less obscurity – fewer mistakes that lead to guest displeasure.
Late Charlie Munger once said:
Avoiding stupidity is more effective than seeking brilliance
Kanban workflows, by design can help your staff avoid "stupidity" that might lead to guest displeasure. Haven's tech can take this a notch up to help your team become consistent with this and capture more analytics for continuous improvement.
