Interview
The Gist
- Strategic evolution. Gautam Pantakar discusses the importance of updating traditional customer and employee experience strategies to meet diverse needs.
- Emotional connection. Oldfield’s initiatives focus on creating an emotional impact by empowering employees and enhancing customer satisfaction.
- Employee engagement. Implementing programs like the Plus One program, Oldfield fosters a culture of recognition and collaboration.
- Brand legacy. By integrating innovative employee engagement strategies, Oldfield aims to maintain its reputation as a premier community while continuously improving both employee and customer experiences.
Gautam Pantakar, general manager at Oldfield, shares insights into the dynamic world of customer and employee experiences, highlighting the importance of connecting these two crucial elements to drive success.
In this episode of CMSWire's Beyond the Call, Pantakar delves into the intricacies of his role and the strategies he employs to enhance both customer and employee experiences. He discusses the Plus One program, which recognizes outstanding employee contributions, and how small initiatives can create significant impacts on overall satisfaction.
Table of Contents
- Learning the Landscape (0:08)
- Enhancing Employee Experience (5:10)
- Bridging Employee and Customer Experience (7:56)
- Listening to Employees (10:30)
- Utilizing Technology for Experience (12:37)
- Promoting Internal Talent (20:41)
- Empanadas and Engagement (23:04)
- Plans for the Future (27:00)
Learning the Landscape (0:08)
Dom Nicastro: Hey everybody, Dom Nicastro here, editor-in-chief of CMSWire. On this latest CMSWire TV show Beyond the Call, we’ve got a familiar voice. Not a familiar face yet because we had a podcast with him. That’s all audio. But now you get to see the face behind the words of wisdom from Gautam Pantakar. He is the GM of Oldfield’s community along the Okatie River in South Carolina, and I’m just gonna explain it this way. Gautam, it's a community of awesome stuff. How does that sound?
Gautam Pantakar: It is a community of awesome stuff.
Dom Nicastro: Is that your new tagline?
Gautam Pantakar: As far as I’m concerned, I’m the luckiest guy in the world. Community of awesome.
Dom Nicastro: So, we have you on today because last time when we had you on the CX Decoded podcast, we talked a lot about experience. In a past life, that was your role, right? Chief Experience Officer?
Gautam Pantakar: Yeah, that’s correct. I was responsible for overseeing both customer and employee experiences. It was not just about making the customers happy but also ensuring that employees were engaged and satisfied.
Dom Nicastro: Not just the front end, not just the CX, but the EX (employee experience) too. You are passionate about that. And you’re passionate about connecting those dots. We’re going to talk through that today because it’s so important. It’s not the old school, like, "Yeah, keep them happy and then they’ll make the customers happy." I mean, kind of, that’s the goal. But there’s a lot more to it than that. But before we get into all that, for those who didn’t catch the CX Decoded podcast, give a little background on yourself and your current role.
Gautam Pantakar: I’m your typical golf guy. I started at a young age caddying, went to school, did all that normal stuff. Then you graduate, and you’re like, "What am I supposed to do?" Your parents always tell you to do what makes you happy, right? The one thing that made me happy was getting into the golf business. I graduated, worked outside, worked in the restaurant, did all the normal things. I was very lucky several years ago to work for the old company, Bobby Jones Links. I was there for 18 years.
I was the GM for two clubs, then did a multi-property vice president of operations role. I was able to see how it works overall. The last four years, I was the fancy chief experience officer, in charge of elevating the guest experience and the employee experience. Recently, about seven weeks ago, I changed positions. I’m back to being a GM. The title is not as fancy or sexy, but I am so lucky to be at one of the best properties in the Hilton Head area. This is a mecca for golf. Oldfield is a real special place. We not only have golf, but we have equestrian, boating, fishing, hunting, all the awesome stuff.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah. Now, let’s talk about those first two months. You’re in month two right now. So you come in, and you want to learn not only about the customer landscape but the employee landscape first. As a new GM experience guy who’s doubling down on experience for employees and customers, what do those first two months look like? What do you want to learn?
Gautam Pantakar: I think anyone in this position for the first time concentrates on the same two things. I spend a lot of time just watching the operation. What’s the mechanism for delivery? How do they answer phone calls? How do they make dinner reservations? Is there a host or hostess? That's the guest experience side. Then, I focus on the employee experience. What’s the onboarding program like? What’s the interview process like? When someone’s first day, what does that look like? Are we just slapping them with a nametag and a shirt and saying, "Follow Joey and do what Joey does"?
I spend a lot of time figuring that out. I’m almost 50 years old, so I’ve seen things. You can figure out those pieces quickly. Then it’s time to start running the parallel of improving the guest experience and the employee experience. I focus heavily on the employee experience first.
Related Article: CX and EX: How Engaged Employees Enhance Customer Experience
Enhancing Employee Experience (5:10)
Dom Nicastro: And let's drill down into that focus. Where are the big opportunities here that you've seen in the first seven weeks to improve and grow? Are you going with, "Hey, let's improve existing processes," or, "I'm the new guy, let's do something new"? Where do you find that balance with employee experience?
Gautam Pantakar: For me, it always starts with culture. I think what I would tell you is, have you ever gone to, say, a Walmart and looked at the people working the registers? Maybe they're not really happy. But then you go into electronics, and that team is having the best time ever. They are gelled, they are in unison, they love each other, they're having a great time.
Then you go over to sporting goods, and they're kind of all over the place. For me, you take the cumulative group—golf, tennis, fitness, equestrian, whatever it might be—and you say, "I got to figure out a way to get the culture for the team the same." Because I can walk into one place and feel really good about the team, and walk into another place and say, "This is just a bunch of strangers." So, we start with culture right off the bat.
One of the things we started is a plus one program, which is just a great simple program. It's basically three parts. Number one is a "caught doing great" program, where we can award each other. If I see somebody walking in the rain to their house, I can jump in a golf cart, grab an umbrella, and take them home.
I can award someone a plus one for doing that. The members can also award the employees a plus one. The second part of that is the employee of the month. We've got an awesome TV screen in the lobby, where the person's face is displayed. The last thing is an employee of the year. Simple things like that start recognizing people and then it's about achieving that, because they want the plus one pin on their shirt.
Bridging Employee and Customer Experience (7:56)
Dom Nicastro: Ultimately, you're looking for that to come full circle and be connected to the CX. What better way to connect EX to CX than to reward good CX? That's exactly what you're doing.
Gautam Pantakar: Exactly. On top of that, when you're improving the EX side, you also have to pay close attention to what cool things you can do to improve the customer experience. Something really small but impactful was adding tall stainless steel water bottles to the dinner experience. The server comes over, pours your water, and makes great conversation. It was an idea birthed from an employee because we made it such that they tell us what the customer wants. They suggested tableside water service, and the customer goes, "That's really cool." And I can say, "That wasn't even my idea; it was theirs," and push the applause to them.
Related Article: AI in Customer Experience and Employee Experience: Finding Balance
Listening to Employees (10:30)
Dom Nicastro: That's amazing. In that one effort, you've not only accomplished a great employee experience, but the customers are happy. Also, you listened to the employees, which is probably the most important part. So many employees feel unheard. It's like Undercover Boss—going out and listening to what their struggles are with their customers. It reminds me of a lot of our audience dealing with contact centers. Empower those agents by listening to them, rather than just hard metrics like call resolution times. Talk about some anecdotal stuff, one-on-one.
Gautam Pantakar: That's the culture piece. You can talk about culture all day and say, "We have great culture," but it's actually bringing it to life. One of the questions I ask in orientations is, "Do you feel safe to make good decisions?" Every hand goes up. But then I ask, "If a burger comes out undercooked, and it goes back overcooked, what do you do?" They say, "I go get a manager."
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So, the reality is, they don't feel safe. They should just comp the hamburger and bring out a plate of cookies. If I can get rid of them feeling scared of getting fired, that's the thing. We've had instances where servers brought out cakes for birthdays without asking. If I can build that, then I've got 150 people doing cool stuff everywhere, and that's where the magic happens.
Related Article: Is It Time to Make CX and EX 'One Experience'?
Utilizing Technology for Experience (12:37)
Dom Nicastro: You talked about culture and how it carries over in an infectious way, in a good way. I know that a lot of these are small anecdotes, good small stories that get bigger because it’s growing in the culture. Do you have—or do you even need—some sort of analytics tracking system for EX and CX and how they merge together? It's early, and many vendors are saying they're coming out with tools that combine EX and CX, and some might have had success there. Do you use technology in any way to infuse action steps with EX and CX? Is anything helping in a technology sense?
Gautam Pantakar: Yeah, we do. So, I'll show you something. We have this really cool Oldfield app. It's very cool. Members can sign up for events, and there's a section for feedback on employees. There's also an employee chat feature. You can’t quantify it by dollars, but you can quantify it by culture. When you see an active chat room and people engaged, like saying happy birthday, that's valuable. We also do employee surveys and have a member survey that ties back to the NPS, the net promoter score. I'm not a huge NPS guy because I think it's hard to measure without a proper barometer.
But the member feedback we get is great because they highlight the employees and tell us about their experience, and that’s all the data I need. We are also going to start more in-the-moment feedback with QR codes to get quick responses from customers.
Dom Nicastro: Yeah, it’s smart to get those analytics and have that data. The in-person anecdotes are crucial, but having data from the app and surveys can increase your output with CX and your actionable learning measures.
Gautam Pantakar: Yeah, you got to have that. One of the things that even in my old company, I was a big part of, is trying to get the venue managers out in the world 80% of the time and at their desk 20% of the time. If you're at your desk 20% of the time, and you're really spending more time in the field, you can ask, "Hey, how was your day?" If somebody says it was fine, you go, "Fine, how can we make it better?" People are willing to talk to you.
I'm in a very fortunate position because I have the same customers every day. I get to know you by your name, your drink, your kids. It's a little more difficult in the public sector because it's a rotation of different customers. But because I have this cheat sheet, I'm trying to teach people to get up, get out, and make sure you listen to what people are telling you. If you and I go to the bar every single day, and you have a Bud Light and I have a Miller Lite, if our team is really great, I never have to ask you what you're drinking. I just bring it to you. And that's a CX thing that works through the EX side.
Dom Nicastro: It's pretty powerful. You know, it worked for Norm in Cheers.
Gautam Pantakar: They either knew his beer, or he was an alcoholic. I'm not quite sure what it was.
Dom Nicastro: I should have asked you this follow-up earlier, but the NPS — you said the same thing on the CX Decoded podcast last time. You're not heavily doubling down on it, and I agree with you. I've seen too much emphasis on it. What does that tell you, except that someone on a survey said, "Yeah, I'd recommend you to another person"? What about all the in-between nuances that you don't get from that score? You can boast about it to your CEO, for sure. So let's dig a little more into that and why it hasn't been a gold star metric for you.
Gautam Pantakar: I think, you know, we did this with my old company. Now, I'm with a totally different operation, obviously. But the way the NPS works is, you have to spend a lot of time building a barometer. What's your score? 80, who knows what the number might be. My issue with the NPS is, it only calculates one through six and nines and tens. That's it. So if you give someone a nine or a ten, it counts. If you give someone a one through six, it counts. The seventh and eighth just get thrown out.
My real issue is, I need you to tell me why you gave me a five versus a six. What's the difference between an eight and a seven? What's the difference between a one and a two? The NPS needs to be followed up by tangible written documented type of things. The NPS is meant to be a very quick down and dirty, "Here's where I ranked you," and then you're out of the way. I don't know what feedback I get from you. I have to dig into what the customer is thinking in their head, and they don't tell you that in a one-screen thing. If you and I go have dinner, and we say we had a good time, is that a five or an eight? I have no idea. Did you give me an eight because the server did a great job? Did you give me an eight because the food was outstanding? Did you give me an eight for the ambiance? I'm saying, "I would recommend you to somebody because of my service or my product, or both."
I need that kind of data. If you're going to do an NPS, in my opinion, go for it, but you have to have some type of open-ended questions on the back end of it. Otherwise, you're getting a number that means nothing to you. Even in my world, par 72 on a golf course, typically, you shoot higher, the golf course beat you. You shoot lower, you beat the golf course. I have a number, right? So this year, there's no number. You have to establish a number. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I know people use it. Delta uses it. All kinds of major billion-dollar companies use it.
They must have something behind it that they do very differently than me. I'm in the hospitality world. I need to know product and people, and that's what I'm looking for. I think I can only get there through other questions or if I ask questions below the NPS. But I don't know that there's been a five and a six. I have no idea what action you can take from that.
Dom Nicastro: You literally can't glean anything except to put it on social media that we're awesome. "Hey, we're awesome." It's a brand awareness win, right? It's a social media win, maybe, but for the nuts and bolts and customers, it's not substantial.
Gautam Pantakar: I don't even know if a customer, if you say, "We scored an eight on the NPS," what's the customer going to say? They're going to go, "Okay."
Dom Nicastro: "I'm buying right now."
Gautam Pantakar: I don't know. There is value in it, but I think there are better ways to gauge how you're doing.
Promoting Internal Talent (20:41)
Dom Nicastro: Looking forward, seven weeks into your role at Oldfield, what is one big initiative that you haven't rolled out yet? What do you hope to achieve in the next year?
Gautam Pantakar: The Plus One program is the biggest thing so far. It took us four weeks to build it, but in a year from now, if we’re clicking on all cylinders, I will have promoted more people, maintained more people, and people will have learned more in their roles. Line cooks will be doing more than just cooking; they’ll have dishes that hit the menu because the culture has changed. We will have given out more plus ones, and members will be involved in the program. From a customer standpoint, we will have improved our systems and added things to Oldfield that enhance the guest experience. For example, we will have a concierge service, food delivery in the neighborhood, and more value-added services. Our employee family will become a part of the member family.
Dom Nicastro: That’s a stunning take. The goal of promoting more people within the organization is a true hallmark of being an employee experience leader. You need to get on more stages, on keynotes. We need to get this guy out there more.
Empanadas and Engagement (23:04)
Gautam Pantakar: Thank you. If you have a second, I'll tell you a very cool story. There’s a young lady named Anna who works in the kitchen. She made homemade empanadas and brought them in to share. Our chef was so impressed, he put them on the menu as "Anna and Eddie’s Empanadas." We revealed the menu with different stations, and Anna and Efdie stood behind the empanadas. I've never seen such pride. It's about bringing the culture to life and recognizing people’s contributions.
Dom Nicastro: That’s amazing. Bringing your passion into work and connecting with customers on that level is incredible. It’s a story that can be told over and over again.
Gautam Pantakar: It’s all about emotion. Customer service is not just intelligence; it's all emotion. When people feel treated the right way, they’ll come back. It starts with the employees first. It’s a great story, and I’ll never forget it.
Plans for the Future (27:00)
Dom Nicastro: Gautam, thank you for the interview. We wish you the best of luck. We’ll catch up down the road to see how these initiatives are going and how many plus ones you’ve given out.
Gautam Pantakar: Absolutely. If you’re ever in Hilton Head, please come and see me.
Dom Nicastro: I’ll be there. Thanks, Gautam.
Gautam Pantakar: You can be on a horse with an empanada.
Dom Nicastro: Life goals. Thanks again, Gautam.
