Casino Employees: The Host and the Trustee
Published 2002 – Native American Casino Magazine
Written by David Lapin (CEO)

Taking care of customers and taking care of the Casino's assets: Can training address both?

There is an aspect to training and motivating Casino employees that is unlike anything found in other industries. The unique angle comes from two forces that cast the employee in competing roles: Casino management expects its employees to act as trustees of its assets, and customers expect employees to be their hosts and providers of entertainment.

Customers come to Casinos in search of fun, excitement, and the possibility of winning. As long as the possibility exists, fun and entertainment can thrive. When the hope of winning is lost, disappointment clouds the entertainment and spoils the fun. Yet, even at such times, the Casino employee is responsible for keeping the enjoyment alive, amidst the reality of material loss. Doing so requires that employees draw energy from within themselves to radiate enthusiasm, even in the face of a despondent customer. This unusual stress in the working life of a Casino employee is the primary reason why trainers and consultants emphasize the importance of customer service.

However, this emphasis on customer service can distract employees from a second, even more important role: that of the employee as trustee of the Casino's assets. Large amounts of cash pass hands at lightning speed amidst multiple distractions with much at stake. The best efforts of surveillance are often insufficient to guarantee the safety of the Casino's money. In addition to surveillance, it is necessary that all Casino employees see themselves as custodians of the Casino's assets. They need to live this role while simultaneously creating the impression that they are dedicated entirely to the enjoyment of the customer. This double and, at times, opposing role presents a challenge in the training and motivating of the Casino employee.

This complexity goes even deeper: Only in this industry does customer delight occur when the company loses. In all other retail and service industries, customers embrace the need to trade money for goods and services that have a perceived value in excess of the price paid. The resulting trade is thus a win for both. In the Casino interchange, this is not so. The customer, despite the mental awareness around the odds of winning and losing, always experiences resentment and disappointment at the moment of loss. The only time the customer can really celebrate is when the Casino loses and the customer wins. This throws the employee into conflict: the employee can only truly satisfy the customer at the expense of his or her employer. Since a substantial part of employees' incomes is generated from customer tips, their interests are, at times, more aligned with the customer than with the Casino. This potential misalignment with the Casino represents a risk to the protection of the Casino's cash and assets.

The risk to the Casino's assets is not limited to potential theft or fraud. It extends to the more gray area of using promotional allowances ("comps") to satisfy guests. "Comping" is an important way to keep a disappointed customer happy. It makes a customer feel valued. But too often "comping" is used by employees (at least those who are authorized to do so) to build their own relationships with customers, funding this relationship-building with Casino assets. In many Casinos throughout the country, there has been a "comping creep," where the ratio of "comping" cost to revenue is on a steady rise, unnecessarily eroding the Casino's profits. Careless use of "comping" enhances employees' roles as customer hosts and entertainers but compromises their roles as trustees of Casino assets.

Promotional Allowances as a Factor of Revenue: An Average of Four Randomly Selected Casinos

(data source: www.casinoresults.com)

As in any business, Casinos need to factor Return on Investment (ROI) into all their business decisions. Any manager or employee who is empowered to make decisions that impact expense or revenue should also view their decisions in that light. Every dollar of "comp" money should be viewed as an investment in customer development and should be evaluated in light of the returns to profitability that it is designed to generate. But for managers and employees to think this way while never dropping standards of service, they need to be aligned with the Casino more than with their customers.

Here are three steps that will help achieve this:

1. Training and motivation needs to focus on both aspects of the employee's role, trustee and host.
2. The employee needs to be emotionally linked to the Casino's revenue and prosperity. This can be achieved by bonuses based on profit rather than revenue.
3. The employee needs to be nurtured by the Casino in a personal as well as a professional way, in much the same way a family should nurture its members.

These three steps will help in the process of aligning employees with the Casino and its prosperity. Then, while employees make their customers feel that they are true hosts dedicated to serving them, they will not lose focus on protecting the Casino's assets.