Ski Butlers relentless focus on excellent customer service leads our managers to get creative with how we recognize great work from our team members. One of the ways we do this is through what we call WOW of the Week. Each week, as a team we discuss important upcoming events and how we can continue to improve. At the end of this meeting, we go around and nominate individuals for going above and beyond for a customer over the last week, and then vote on a winner. This individual within our organization is then recognized in some way, and is typically given a free lunch or something similar as a thank you for their excellent work. These recognitions ultimately are in an effort to help our customers enjoy more time on snow while on vacation, and to make their ski vacations convenient.
Ski tech with ski boots
To further illustrate the meaning and purpose behind our WOW of the Week, I want to outline a few example winners from last season. One winner from our Breckenridge shop last year went out to do a delivery during a snowstorm for a family of eight out in Blue River, which is a town just south of Breckenridge. As our technician was driving up the snowy road in Blue River, he happened across a van that was spinning out, so he stopped to help push the van up the hill. Once the van was moving again, he hopped back into his delivery van only to follow the previously stuck vehicle to the address he was supposed to be delivering to. He then helped the family that he had helped get to their accommodations unload all of their baggage into the house they were renting, and only then proceeded to start the delivery process with the family, which earned him WOW of the week. Sometimes, WOW of the week will instead go to an employee that has done excellent work in the background not in front of a customer. For example, one of our third year ski technicians in Keystone last year took time out of his already busy night to work with a brand new team member that needed guidance on a few items around the shop. In this situation, we decided to recognize this 3rd year team member for a longer period of putting our team members and customers on a pedestal, so we wanted to recognize him for years of hard work with the company and let him know that the Keystone shop would not be what it is today if not for his work ethic and commitment to our customers.
Doing WOW of the Week celebrations weekly with our team allows our team members to understand how their hard work affects our customers, and the business. There are monetary and other company wide incentives to encourage excellent customer service from our ski technicians, but the WOW of the week serves as a local shop recognition, which also further facilitates team bonding in our shops and allows our team to trust and rely upon each other during busy shifts. Although we have very high standards for our employees and hold them accountable to delivering excellent customer service to every customer, it is always nice to recognize someone’s efforts who really went out of their way to WOW a customer.
