From Service to Sales: How Frontline Teams Drive Revenue in Hospitality

Speaker A: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to the Hotel Soprana. Today we have a visitor, Joffrey Toffetti, CEO of Frontline Performance Group. Specializing in transforming frontline teams into revenue generators within hospitality, dining and travel sectors. Joffrey has developed, uh, Engage, uh, data driven platform that helps hotels maximize revenue through service based sales techniques. So, so the idea is very compelling and we really want to know more about what you do, why you do it, what's your success story, what are the trends? So Jeffrey, welcome here.

Speaker B: Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be with you.

Speaker A: Geoffrey, you started on the frontline and became aco. What do leaders fundamentally misunderstand about frontline work?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. Uh, yeah, I started out as a valet and worked my way up in the hotels to like a middle management level, then left the industry, continued to progress through my career, uh, in a very boring procurement outsourcing world. And then met the CEO and founder of FPG at the time and joined then as sort of his number two or three. There was another partner involved and, uh, I've been very fortunate that he handed the reins to me during COVID um, to complete the transition from a traditional business to SaaS. I think what's most overlooked is the skill set that is developed when you are an hourly or frontline employee and you're interacting with people that are very diverse and oftentimes very senior to you in both socioeconomic status and in age and experience. And having to be that chameleon that can interact with all of those various people, sometimes at a very high transaction frequency. It really enables you to be very flexible and very pliable in the way that you interact with people. And I think the people that serve on the front line are the future leaders. I mean, if you look at m, a lot of CEOs, they started at the front line early in their career. Because you like when you think about walking into a board meeting or you think about walking into a big presentation, when you're a front desk agent hotel, you're giving a presentation 30 times a day, every day in front of an audience. So you get very comfortable being in the spotlight. And I think that's a very key fundamental ingredient to leadership is being comfortable working on the front line.

Speaker A: Was there a defining moment where you shifted from operating business to wanting to redesign how they work?

Speaker B: Yeah, there was. When I joined that other middle company. We were pre revenue, so it was a true startup. And I had to take everything I had learned in hotel and service and hospitality and kind of transfer that into a operating model. And then we evolved that model many times because it, I joined in 2000 and then it was a dot com and the dot com bubble burst. But we had the wherewithal to shift to sort of uh, a more traditional business model. So I've been in a position repeatedly to reinvent RE Engineer. There's actually a great book called RE Engineering the Corporation which was like my bible back then on how do you approach workflow RE engineering to get to a desired outcome. I got my Six Sigma green belt at that time, so I spent a lot of time re engineering things. And when I joined fpg I didn't have to worry about RE engineering the value proposition because it was so mature. I was focused more on scale and vertical penetration. Um, and obviously in my prior company we had been web native but we had developed technology over time. So I had some experience in deploying technology into traditional business models. And so uh, our founder, you know, took, trusted me enough to say okay, well we'll spend some money, let's see what this is. He didn't really have a concept what I was talking about. Uh, and we, so we built the platform really initially to be, to enable what we were doing in the field. So to be that sort of intellectual property repository and maybe streamline some analytics. And what we realized was there was nothing like this in the world that could be deployed to, to help companies automate or manage their front line. So it's sort of like the sales force for frontline sales. Um, and that's what it has evolved into.

Speaker C: So when you, when you decide design this uh, project the frontline, uh, the app in uh, Gouch.

Speaker B: Engage, Engage, engage.

Speaker C: Uh, when you designed this uh, frontline app and when it went live, how was the measurements and how was the actual performance of this app and how does the people took it?

Speaker B: Yeah, so it originally it started out as a dash, an analytics dashboard just to show, so we were going into environments and we were saying we're going to help you sell more. So in order to justify that you have to show them how much better they're doing or how they're performing across some metrics. So that was our first thing. It's just a web based dashboard that would show performance and it was also a repository for us to put like our materials that we were using in the field, like training decks and things like that. So at first it was, it was a pretty light app. It, it was really just a reporting platform. But then as clients started using it, they started Requesting things. And so we were taking a lot of feedback directly from clients and building out capabilities within the platform. And probably after about four years we had this sort of collection of capabilities in there and we re architected it into a cohesive platform. And that's when we developed our own learning management system that we put all of our own digital training into. So now you have an analytics platform married to a training platform which was really unique. So you could do training and then see if it worked. Like there's no training company that wants to be measured on the result. Trust me, they don't want to be held accountable to the outcome. We lived but we were commission based at the time so we lived by the outcome. So it was on. It was in our best interest to know what was working and what wasn't working. And that's kind of how it started to go. And then we got into things like we wanted to audit the results. So we have an entire audit function. We wanted to be able to issue and manage incentive programs. So we manage incentives for 50,000 people through the platform. Because we're taking the data out, we know exactly what they're selling, we're able to construct these incentive programs and manage them in the system and then those go to the payroll department to pay them and they're. It's all audited in between. So it's really matured into an operating platform for frontline sales. But it really started as a way to provide visibility to the client. They were using spreadsheets and Microsoft applications and, and we turned it into a web. Yeah, really old school because we're going to, we're going 2014, 2015 and it's. Most industries were on the web already but stuff like this in hospitality really wasn't. So we kind of pioneered that online

Speaker C: analytics if you can remember what was the first feedbacks from the first frontline guys who were using it actually when they got introduced by their business owners. Hey, you're gonna use this one now. And after a while what were their feedbacks?

Speaker B: Yeah, so if we go back pre Covid where our business model was to go on site and, and actually stand at the front desk physically and train and coach and support. And so when we brought the technology it was like a uh, there was a wow factor because they uh, like I said, they were using spreadsheets and things and we were taking the data directly out of the pms. We were measuring it automatically. They didn't have to print the folios and you know, tick and tie out the results. So it had that impact. But at the time, we were so integrated into what they were doing that it just became kind of part of. Part of what we brought. But I will say, I'll tell a quick story. So the first hotel we ever worked with was the Waldorf Astoria, New York, which at the time was top five hotel in the world, probably the number one in North America. And we were actually sent there by an executive at Hilton because we wouldn't leave him alone. And he was getting annoyed. We were a little company. So he said, okay, go do that one, thinking we would just fall right on our face, that it would be overwhelming to us. But we tripled the results. So when we were able to start sending the digital results out electronically, m It was like, really quick. We got a lot of attention because now it was starting to circulate and people were sharing it around. And all of a sudden, you know, we went from one hotel to 30 hotels to 200 hotels because the results were visible. Before that, it would have been difficult to share results because you were dealing with one hotel, one person. It wasn't electronic, it wasn't living in the web. So it did have the impact of making it, know, more scalable to be able to share the results.

Speaker C: Okay, that sounds really, really good. And if you measure it, it was back in the day, what, 2015, 2014. It has come a long way from that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Well, great. So, Diana, back to you. What's next?

Speaker A: I've been thinking that you have, uh, a lot of, uh, different data and, uh, what shift in hospitality market do you see? What are the trends and tendencies? Because you're working worldwide. Right. And do you see also the difference in between the continents?

Speaker B: There's a lot of difference. Well, there's a lot of similarity, a lot of difference. Hotels are hotels, but the mindset of the operators and owners varies pretty widely, you know, region to region. But, um, you know, one of the big trends that we're seeing, and I think we. We may have participated in this trend a little bit because we've wanted this to happen, but now it's actually happening, is, is a shift of focus from Revpar to Trev par. So we've been advocating for hotels to stop looking at revenue performance in these little silos and look at it more holistically. You know, sales per guest, sales per occupied room. These are not metrics that are widely known yet, but they do. They are used in little pockets here and there. And so what we're seeing is at the C suite of the major hotel Companies, they've started really focusing on trev par, which is total revenue per available room rather than just room revenue, which brings in food and beverage, which brings in spa. Um, because really if you, if we take a lesson, we did a lot of work in theme parks and I can tell you that theme parks are extraordinarily scientific. They don't take, leave anything to chance. And we learned a lot from them on how they view revenue. So they, they look at revenue on a per cap basis, number of bodies in the park divided into the revenue. Um, and so they have a per cap target in every, you know, sector. And so we were, we've been trying to bring that into hotels for a long time to say, let's look holistically at total revenue produced by everyone who's on the property. That's how you know how you're doing. Because you could have a, you know, a bang up food and beverage operation, but the gift shop and the spa is dead and you're not getting that full value of the per cap revenue. So I would say that's a big trend we're seeing is the eyes are being opened to the power of ancillary revenue. Finally, you know, car rental lives or dies by ancillary revenue. The airlines live or die by ancillary revenue. The hotels are just starting to understand that their profit margin can be make or break on the ancillary front. And we love being kind of on the forefront of that because that's all we care about, about, that's all we think about is once the guest arrives, you know, what is their experience and how much are they spending. And that slice is now becoming, I think, a major focal point.

Speaker A: What, uh, I'm hearing is, um, the site for the company owners and management, how they can use it. But I'm recruiting people and I hear different stories about motivation, what motivates them and across different cultures. Uh, what is universally true about human motivation? Is it really about the money or what motivates, uh, the team the most and what is missing in real time performance?

Speaker B: That is a wonderful question. And if you boil down frontline performance group to our core, it's our belief in people. We believe in the potential of people and we believe in the impact of the frontline. We see it every day and we, we know that that's where the future leaders are coming from. So what motivates a frontline person? We've spent a lot of time, we've been doing this over 30 years. I can tell you it's three things and these three things have to exist in harmony or else you're going to have a, uh, lopsided culture. The first is recognition. There are people who are motivated by being recognized for their work. The second is accountability. There are people that are motivated by being accountable to something, an expectation. The third is reward. So cash incentive, reward. It's some. Every person, it's one of. It's some combination of those three. But it's never just one or just two. It's always the three. So when you look at engage our system, we engineered it to hit all three of those things consistently. So there's recognition, there's reward, there's accountability. You're on a leaderboard. So if you have, uh, an environment where one of those is completely missing, like we go into some places internationally, and there's no incentives. They don't give it. They don't believe in incentives. That's what they say to us. We don't believe in incentives. Well, then you don't know what you're doing because you're missing a huge, you know, chunk of what motivates people to perform. And we have a concept that we like because everyone, everyone comes to work and does something right, if you're not doing anything, they're going to fire you immediately. So everyone's doing some work. So the real issue is how do you get them to give you more effort? Give the maximum amount of effort. That's what people think of as employee engagement. We have a term for that we like, which is discretionary effort. Because the difference between someone showing up to work and doing enough not to get fired, or someone showing up to work and giving it everything they've got, the difference between those two things is at their discretion. So how do you get them to grant that to you freely is what you're after. Like, how do you get them to be excited about what's happening, to believe in the mission, to believe in each other? And that all comes down to one word, culture. And if you have a bad culture, you can't expect people to give you more than they have to. Right? They're only going to give you what you absolutely require unless the culture is really strong. So we've spent 30 years building our own culture, focusing on our own culture as sort of a laboratory for what? How do you deploy a culture elsewhere? And it's the hardest thing to do in business, is way harder than building technology or designing a pretty hotel. Building a culture is tough because it requires leaders who believe in the culture and the mission and who want to Lead and want to be servant leaders. So I mean it's a topic that fills a lot of books, but it's, it's our primary focus because if you don't get discretionary effort from people, you don't get outsized results.

Speaker A: Uh, you mentioned a very, uh, interesting concept, servant leadership. And usually it is relating to more or less some Christian mindset, uh, and attitude in uh, this sphere. But very often people are saying, you know, servant leadership. Um, but yeah, what's in it for me? Where is the parks? And how do you measure culture?

Speaker B: Well, we measure it by performance. That's what engage measures. We see performance as a proxy for culture. If you have a high performing organization, you probably have a very strong culture. If you have a lackluster result, you probably have a weak culture. And yes, servant leadership is rooted, I think originally in a Christian ethos, but I view it as just like the inverted pyramid. The leaders. As the CEO, I do the least amount of work compared to the frontline in our company. They're doing all the work. So my job is to enable them to do their work. If I'm thinking that they're enabling me, um, I have my screws loose. So leaders have to be thinking, I am serving you so you can serve the customer. I have a saying that I really like using because it makes, it makes bad leaders very uncomfortable and it makes good leaders feel really good. Here it is. You can expect your guests to be treated exactly the way you treat those you lead. So if you don't love and care for your people, if you're not interested in what they're going through, if you're not there to listen to them, they're not going to care what the guest thinks. They're not going to listen to the guest. But if you create a nurturing environment, a trusting environment where they feel safe and nurtured and then you ask them to care for your guest, they will. So it's really that simple. But when you're running an organization with say, you know, 20 hotels and you've got 20 front desk managers and you want a robust front desk culture, you have to have 20 front desk managers bought into that concept. That is where the challenge is, is how does it, how do you permeate that through your organization?

Speaker C: I completely agree with you on that one. Because a lot of business owners nowadays, especially traveling around and coming across to the business, in hotels or in restaurants, they do not pay attention or just they have, they head in the sand that the frontline guys, the waiters, waitresses, Bartenders and managers, they are the bridge between a guest and their business. And if they don't invest in their own people, don't motivate them, it doesn't matter, uh, which is physically or digitally trained them and invest in a training to build their confidence to fulfill their job and fulfill their duty. They shooting themselves in uh, a foot, I believe.

Speaker B: So, uh, you're exactly correct. I mean when you think about the front line or the front desk, the front desk agent in a lot of circumstances could be the only employee of the hotel that the guest speaks to because they're going to check in, go to the room, go to meetings, go to the room, order room service, leave that. Your entire business, your entire brand is the interaction between that frontline employee and that guest. The lobby doesn't matter. The quality of your sheets don't matter. If they have a poor interaction with that person, it's going to taint the entire trip.

Speaker C: I believe, um, especially the first one. When they pull up to those hotel doors or restaurant doors, if you are greeted badly, you might as well wave goodbye to your five star review.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: It's, it doesn't matter how hard you're gonna try afterwards, you're probably gonna end up 3.5 in the best case at 4 stars. Because these people, like a lot of business owners, needs, uh, a reminder, uh, where the guest journey to their business starts when they leave their house, not when they enter their building. That's right. It's like it's a huge investment, which a lot, and I must say a lot people with who I have come across, they do not pay attention to it. They don't think like that. They think, oh, this person just showed up on my doorstep, he wants a table. I don't feel like it today.

Speaker B: So, so yeah, no, you're, you're, you're hitting the nail on the head because. And again, back to the question you have. Let's say you have a valet working at your hotel who's going to be the first point of contact with the guests when they arrive? How are they feeling if they don't feel cared for and they don't feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves, it doesn't matter. Then their emotional state will impact how they interact with the guests. They might even ignore them if they're not feeling it. But if they are worried about the success and care of their co workers, if they believe that their leaders are invested in them and that care about them and they're part of a culture, they're not going to let a guest get out of their car and have a bad experience. They will run across the drive to greet someone because they believe that what they do impacts others. There was a GM of a hotel here in Florida called the. It was another Waldorf called the Boca Resort. It's now an independent hotel. This guy knew every employee of his 1100 employees by name. He would walk the property, he knew the landscapers names. He knew if his mom was having surgery, if someone's dog died. Because he viewed his number one job was keeping those people motivated and doing it through care and attention and concern. And he had an unbelievable culture. Every employee you interacted with that hotel was amazing. Lights out. They weren't special breed of people. It was because they were existing. They knew that, that gm, who in a lot of hotels, the front desk agent never even talks to the gm. They might not ever even meet the gm, which is startling, but true. He would come, he would make his way to different departments every day just to, just to say hello and let them know that he cared and it drove the culture. And that property sold for, you know, a billion and a half dollars.

Speaker C: I completely agree with you that a culture takes a lot of time to build, but it can stare the training in a, uh, and a culture and a refreshment of the staff and a team's mindset can stare the business in the right direction. Of course it's not going to happen in a couple of hours or a couple of days or months or even a years. But if you got to start somewhere,

Speaker B: you got to start somewhere, get to that billion. That's right. I mean, another thing that I say a lot is trust. Leaders give trust freely because I think another underlying issue is trust. If people feel trusted and they trust back, that's when you have the foundation of a strong culture. And uh, way too often leaders view it as the employee has to earn my trust. You know, you have to earn my respect. You have to earn my trust. No, I disagree completely. I'm going to give you my trust. You can break it, and when you break it, there will be consequences to that. But I'm going to give it to you. The first thing that I say to new employees when I meet them is, I trust you. We hired you. I trust my team to pick you. You've been screened. You're now part of my tribe. I trust you completely. Go light the world on fire. Because if I say you have to earn my trust, what I'm actually saying is I don't trust you. And if you tell someone you don't trust them, they're going to be insecure and afraid and nervous. And that's where the negative culture all starts.

Speaker C: And it's going to backfire pretty fast, big time.

Speaker B: But it happens constantly, see? Especially like the middle management layer. We see it all the time that they just treat their employees like a necessary expense. Unless they, like, do something spectacular, they get no attention. And that's just horrific for people. That people live, uh, in a very negative environment a lot of the time. And we tell these leaders, you might be the bright spot in that person's life. I mean, we've started work with companies and found out that, that people on the front line are living in their car and their manager doesn't even know that, that they're homeless. You know, that like, they could be living in. Their parents could be dying, or, uh, they could have a sick child at home. And when they come to work, you could be the bright spot in their life or you could be the anchor around their neck. And which one would you prefer to be exactly?

Speaker C: I agree with you on that one.

Speaker A: Um, Jeffrey, I have a question. If a CEO truly embrace the belief that frontline staff drive revenue, they are the bridge, right? What are the first three uncomfortable changes they would need to make?

Speaker B: Interesting uncomfortable change. Well, one is they have to embrace incentive programs because. But you can tune the incentive to growth of revenue so you're not paying more on the existing performance, if there is any. But you have to embrace the idea that front desk agents could make 50, 60 thousand dollars a year if they're really good. You're not changing their base wage, you're just giving them a pathway. A lot of times, you know, leaders particularly, maybe not the general manager. General managers are usually pretty seasoned people and they have a pretty good outlook on things. But like department heads or, uh, is it. Is a front desk manager going to be comfortable that a front desk agent could make more money than them? That's a, uh, that's a hard reality that if you really want to be a top performer, you're going to have a couple people that are going to make more than you. And I remember when I first, first worked at the front desk, I start. I mean, I'm rooted in this stuff. I started upselling as soon as I found out there was an incentive. That was my entire mission in life. And I was making more than my manager and it was making her mad. It was. She was treating me poorly because I was ma. But she didn't understand I was making the hotel more than they were paying me, like I was making them a profit. So that's a really hard one. Another one is, like I said, and I've said this in leadership trainings, in person with senior executives that, uh, you can expect your guests to be treated the way you treat the people you lead. That's an uncomfortable truth because there's a lot of hard driving, you know, authoritarian leaders that view their, Their, their word as, as law, that have to abandon that because that's a terrible way to lead people. You know, uh, holding people accountable. Yes. Setting high standards. Yes. Trusting them and serving them. Yes. You can't do. Just impose will on people and not give back to them. And like my. I think if you asked all the employees of our company, do they think that I would be willing to jump in and help them do their job? I think they would say yes. I make, I'm intentional about doing work that a lot of CEOs probably wouldn't consider doing because, like, I'll jump on a troubled client call, even if it's not going to move the needle on our revenue. Because I'm, I'm more interested in demonstrating to the team that there's nothing I'm going to ask them or expect them to do that I'm not willing to do myself. It's like that undercover CEO show where they put them in the kitchen, you know, or whatever. But I think it's important that they, they believe that you will jump into the trenches and fight the war with them. You're not just going to send them off into battle. And like, I remember being front desk agent and the, you know, I had a manager that when, when an angry guest would come to the desk, she'd leave the back office and, like, go out the back door. And so when I became the manager, when I saw an angry guest come in the lobby, I would go into the lobby and take them away from the desk. Uh, I would take them away from the front desk agent, not leave them in the fire getting yelled at. You know, I would take it myself. Um, that's just a mindset, a leadership mindset that I think, um, has to be cultivated in a culture if you want to really be top performing.

Speaker A: Carlos, do you have a question?

Speaker C: No. I completely agree with, uh, Jeffrey here that I found myself recently, I found myself in a very interesting situation where first time in my life, I have a cap of what I can earn. The band, I must say, in. I've been in an, uh, industry for 17 years, opening restaurants all over the Place, running teams, running restaurants and stuff. And this is the first time I find myself in a position where, where going back to your thing, what you said about the incentives, there isn't none. So I'm like, that scares me as a professional. Really, really does scare me. Where you go to your. The big, big boss and goes, is there any way I can earn more? I can bring the value to the table? And the answer is like, no, not really. It is what it is. And then you're like, okay, then, um, we're gonna start to think about some new projects right now. So. So. Yeah. And that's how they, that's how businesses, uh, lose good people.

Speaker B: The people that ask the question that you just asked are the people you want to, you want to keep. Because if people are willing to stake their income on the outcome, those are the people that are going to go after it. The people that never ask for the ability to generate their own income are people that, they're just, you know, they're, they're there to collect the paycheck. Not to say they can't be motivated to do great things, but innately, they're not people that are innately motivated. I've always wanted to have a big portion. In, uh, fact, in my personal, in my career, three times I have foregone income for equity because I believe that I'm going to generate more value in the enterprise overall, which is going to pay off a lot more than getting a little extra bonus. Now, grant, I want income, don't get me wrong. But, but there have been three times where I have taken less to get more equity, uh, which is the ultimate bet on outcome that I think. But if people are saying, hey, if I do more, if I generate this value, can I get a piece of it? Those are the people you want to invest in.

Speaker C: Yes, that's definitely. I've seen that. I've seen that in my life, but I haven't seen that in, uh, many places. And in many places, the people's mindset towards these things are in diapers. Like, literally, like they need to be pulled by the hand. And it's like, hey, guys, listen, I see this, I see this, I see this here. And it doesn't acquire massive changes to reinvent the wheel.

Speaker B: Like. That's right. That's, uh, right. And you know, sadly, like, there are a lot of people in the world that wouldn't believe a leader who came and was trying to build a culture with them because they've been so scarred by life and by bad leaders. They're jaded. And we've gone into environments where, you know, you go into your first seminar and people are sitting there with their arms crossed and you know, they look skeptical and it takes months to win their trust. And then once you win their trust, they become top performers because now they've unleashed all that capability that they had. But it's really sad. There are a lot of people that go to work every day in a miserable dictatorial environment that just keeps them afraid and insecure. And those business owners and those business managers are missing the boat that if you turn that into a safe space, they will perform better and then they will make you more money.

Speaker C: All it takes is a, uh, right mindset and right direction for the team and they will. Like I say to our clients when we talk on cold calls or on uh, on emails, I say to these people is like on the paper, yeah, it looks pricey for whoever. Yeah, for smaller business, looks pricey. Uh, for me to come in, in a person and say, hey, I'm gonna increase your sales, like you said, you need to earn that trust. But when you click and when you think about it further, a weekend further or a month further, if I come on a Wednesday and leave on a Friday, your fellows gonna increase. If you get five waiters by 5%, that's how much? 25% up already over the weekend. That's your training cost covered and your business is thriving in the right direction. But in sadly a lot, a lot of people, some people think that way. Uh, we got some projects on the way, but some people doesn't. So.

Speaker B: Oh, I mean work. We're coming into hotels and we're saying we're going to increase your RevPAR by 3% at the front desk. I mean you have to open a restaurant to raise your rest, your RevPAR by 3% or you have to come up with an amenity and, and you're only going to pay us 5% of that, roughly, or 8% of that. And they, they're like, it's too expensive. I'm like, you're going to keep 92% of that and it's too expensive. Like I, I mean I, I know I'm fortunate to know a couple of, you know, big wigs, if you will, in hospitality. And I share these stories with them where we have a GM who won't take our call even though we're being introduced to them. And we're, you know, he's like, they should be fired. They don't understand that you guys bring revenue. That's all you do is enable revenue production. And if you, if they think that 8% is too expensive, it's crazy. It's just crazy. And we have, we have clients that are, they're, because we're a fixed fee now, we're on a subscription, but they're getting a 40 to 150 to 1 ROI. Uh, and our worst performing customers are like a 6, 7 to 1 ROI. That's still seven times the value. And they're, they're skeptical. It's really, it's mind bending at times.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So talking about future, uh, vision, I have a question that looking ahead, what will a high performing frontline employee look like in five to 10 years? Because we have some trends and tendencies and which I initially did not speak, uh, or ask about AI transformation. But what do you think high performing frontline employee will look like? Will it be human? Will it be a robot?

Speaker B: You know, that's a fun question because with AI, at some point the AI will be able to speak and listen like a human. It'll sound, I mean there's already some examples where robots sound natural, but there's still a latency in like they don't do well if you talk over them. There's still some technical issues, but five or ten years from now there could be of humanoid robots standing at a front desk and interacting with people. I would hope that doesn't necessarily happen. Like I said, if you take humans out of hospitality, you've taken service out of hospitality and people want to be served by people. That's just innate. I think obviously we're human, we want to interact with humans, but I think a top performing front desk agent is going to be enabled by technology to do more, to be more effective. I mean I could see, you know, from a science fiction standpoint, I could see wearing glasses. That is putting information about the guest in your vision that they can't see. You could have an earpiece in that's prompting you what to offer based on their body language. I mean there's like we actually have some technology in our lab that is looking at, um, you know, analyzing interactions in real time, you know, doing sentiment analysis and stuff. So I think that front desk agents in the future are going to be armed with more information to be more effective in uh, in, in their offering and in their interactions. I think that's inevitable. But I do think, you know, robots, someone's going to do that and we'll probably be in the background somewhere teaching the robot what to say because a lot of what we do is actually Dialog construction and a proper use of language when, when making offers. So I could see us being like involved in the background somewhere. But I hope it's people, I hope it's not robots, hopefully.

Speaker C: That sounds uh, that sounds really, really interesting. Uh, on this part, on a front agent. Frontline, uh, agent, um, are you talking about with time developing, uh, literally a body language analysis on a, on a guest when he arrives and um, literally the whole psychology thing into the, into the data driven, uh, prompt agent.

Speaker B: Right, yeah, there, there, there are technologies for body language, facial recognition. Now we're thinking more about voice. You can. Because like think about this way. We're trying to teach, you know, people to make offers. How do you know they're making the offer, you know, and did they make the offer well or not? And even in a restaurant, you know, like are they offering the specials, are they selling an appetizer or not? It's almost impossible to know without standing there. And when you stand there, they'll offer it. When you don't stand there, how do you know they're offering it or not? You know, so you see, you see.

Speaker C: Sorry, uh, you see it in your revenue.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, you see that they're not selling it. But are they offering it is the question. Because they can come up with excuses. Well, they, I offer but they didn't want it. Well, this is, this is a gap in human performance that I think technology could ultimately fill and do it without being creepy. You know, where there's a camera pointed at you or you're wearing a microphone. There's really amazing breakthroughs. But yeah, I think the, the I already know companies that are for instance are measuring, you know, they're using their surveillance cameras in retail stores for instance, and they're tracking where people go and then the AI is figuring out the pathway and then what products to put on that pathway. That's all being done with AI now. So there's going to be a lot. I think the front line of the future is going to be armed with a lot of very pointed moment in time data that's highly relevant that will allow them to, to perform better.

Speaker C: Yeah, we used to, we used to do this layout thing also when opening the new restaurants. We used to do a role play before even the restaurant is laid out and a seating is put together. Used to three, four people, me and other few guys, we used to walk through these premises to see what is the best psychologically to actually where to sit, where is the best tables, what's the best layout, how many can you fit in here so you're not shoulder by shoulder and all, all the layout. So it's psychologically for a guest, as enjoyable as possible.

Speaker B: Yeah. So that everyone has a good view, you know, or everyone isn't looking at the bathroom entrance, you know, like those kind of things. And I'd imagine with your experience and an AI platform, you could do that virtually. You could just take the layout of the restaurant, where are the windows, and probably teach it to lay that out and give you like three or four models that you could then, you know, manifest in the real world.

Speaker C: I think we can go further with that.

Speaker A: Can I contribute with feng shui knowledge?

Speaker B: Yeah. Feng shui, absolutely. No. No question.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's, uh, amazing what, uh, technology can do with what we used to do manually. And uh, now what's the analysis that you can get for health and everything for business, you know, what, what used to be, um, a lot of work, we are getting it automated and it is increasing and making our lives so much easier. So I want to thank you, Jeffrey, for joining us here today and sharing. It was very interesting to listen to what you are working on, what you're dealing with and what, uh, is happening in hospitality sector across the world. And I always believe that, uh, behind every role is a human. So I truly want to thank you.

Speaker B: My pleasure. It was great to be here. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker C: Awesome. Likewise here. And I think in a near future, uh, we should carry on and record, uh, the second episode.

Speaker B: I would love to do that.

Speaker C: I think there is a lot we can discuss and talk about and it's been really enjoyable. Thank you so much.

Speaker B: I agree.

Speaker C: What I could say to our listeners. I think this trio will be back. Definitely.

Speaker B: Love to.

Speaker A: Thank you. And dear listener, please don't forget you can reach out to us by podcastoprana. No, Feel free to share your feedback, ideas, suggestions, or questions for the next episode.