Something old, something new

Though its lodging properties have a distinctly traditional feel, La Quinta Inns is taking an untraditional approach to analyzing and distributing the data from its customer satisfaction research. La Quinta is joining a growing number of firms that are harnessing the power of computers to extract more value from their research. Their efforts may make the frantic client-to-supplier phone call a thing of the past.


Founded in 1968 and still based in Texas, La Quinta owns and operates over 300 limited service, mid-price hotels, primarily in warm-weather regions of the U.S. The chain includes both La Quinta Inns and La Quinta Inn & Suites locations, which are larger and boast additional amenities.

The company's customer satisfaction program is fairly standard stuff: a mail survey is sent to a sample of recent guests at each property and the results are distributed quarterly to management. But with the help of its research partner, Minneapolis-based Custom Research Inc. (CRI), La Quinta is doing the quarterly report one better, using a desktop system to give its regional and general managers a lot more control over the kind of information they can extract from the results and allowing them to understand satisfaction by customer segment and individualize key drivers for each hotel.

CRI sends the updated survey data to La Quinta management on Zip disks, which they incorporate into a database CRI developed for La Quinta. "They are actually managing the database themselves," says Marcia Gunderson, research manager, Custom Research Inc. "So it saves a lot of time because normally if they had questions or areas that they wanted to look at, they would have to call us and ask us to dig into it. Now they can go into the database themselves and look at the most recent data right down to the property level."

CRI is flexible in working with clients to design the most appropriate on-site data analysis capability, Gunderson says. In La Quinta's case, Microsoft programs Access and Excel are used to view and manipulate the data. "Each company has its own way of doing business and we try to accommodate clients so they don't need to spend a lot of money on setting up systems to run the program," she says.

Comment cards

In the mid-'90s, La Quinta used comment cards distributed at check-in by the front-desk clerk to measure satisfaction. It's a form of customer feedback but one subject to all kinds of inconsistencies and influences.

Since the summer of 1997, La Quinta and CRI have used the mailed satisfaction survey. The company has worked hard to make the survey easy for guests to fill out and relevant for its managers, says Jim Gard, La Quinta's director of relationship marketing and research. La Quinta conducted focus groups with guests to determine the factors that contribute to a satisfying lodging experience and also to have them fill out early versions of the mail survey. "We timed the questionnaire in the groups to make sure it was no more than three or four minutes. There are just so many things you can ask about but you have to draw the line somewhere," Gard says.

Questionnaire development focus groups with front-desk service people and La Quinta managers helped win their buy-in to the process and also showed them that the survey wouldn't be measuring service aspects that were out of their control. "You want people to believe that the survey questions represent an accurate measurement of what they do and things they could change if scores were not so good. We wanted to make sure they felt that they had some input into what the customer evaluates on the form," Gard says.

(La Quinta has a head start on one crucial aspect of a mail survey: The guest registration process in most cases yields accurate and up-to-date addresses and other information, so the surveys reach the right people and reach them quickly. The only roadblocks, Gard says, are rooms that are booked by business travelers who list their accounts payable department's address and those booked by travel agents.)

The survey covers the basics of a lodging stay chronologically, including check-in, the condition of the room, any problems the guest may have encountered, and La Quinta's continental breakfast. "We start from the minute they drove up to the property," Gard says, "and we take them back through the experience. When you drove up, was the exterior appealing? Were you greeted warmly? Were your reservations in order? Was the staff friendly and helpful? We put the questions right in the order they experienced things so that they can really reconstruct it from memory, because people are probably getting the survey about 10 to 17 days after checkout. That approach works very well for us."

The goal is 75 completed surveys per location per quarter. Gard estimates the return rate is about 26 percent.

In addition to the computer files, CRI produces a property-level printed report, which gives managers a one-page snapshot of each location's performance and also includes more in-depth information on subsequent pages. On the first page they can see how their location rates overall, one-year trend data, and then a list of areas in which their location performs at higher levels and at lower levels than most other La Quinta Inns. CRI also developed a Guest Loyalty Profile which uses responses to questions on intent-to-return and the comprehensive performance of the property to create a graphic indication of guest loyalty.

Best practices

The survey gives La Quinta a way to develop a list of best practices by looking at the properties that score highly and examining how their practices differ from properties that don't do so well. (It's been effective enough to allow La Quinta to eliminate its mystery shopping program.) Also, the scores are incorporated into manager bonuses - not at a high percentage, but enough to add a little extra incentive to strive for excellence.

The quarterly time frame works well, but everyone involved must realize that change doesn't happen overnight, Gard says. If a problem crops up, it may take one or two quarters to turn things around. "You want to have the survey data be timely so that people can act on it, but you understand that the process to change things takes time. Weekly reports don't make sense because you can't change things that quickly. For our business, sending the results out quarterly makes good sense."

The printed reports haven't changed much since the surveying began, though some adjustments have been made to help managers get more from the data. Gard says general managers used to call him wondering why their scores had gone down despite their efforts to improve things. In many cases, they weren't looking at problem resolution scores and acting to improve in that area. "I looked at their reports, and invariably, they tended to look at the overall rating and some of the key things, but they weren't looking at service areas like problem resolution. We were actually not producing graphs on the problem resolution section of the survey and we went in and changed that so they now can see how they are doing in those areas. A lot of hotels have improved in that regard."

The key drivers of satisfaction have been pared down to five or six areas, Gard says, but all seem to have equal importance. "It's the obvious things like the staff, room cleanliness, maintenance. But the way the regression came out, it's not like one of those is more important than the others. They're all equally important, so if you let one of them go your score will go down. That's one of the concepts behind a limited-service hotel like La Quinta: you have to cover five or six bases well and it's not complicated but you have to keep them in balance."

No more paper?

The desktop system has been tested with general managers and regional managers and plans are underway to install equipment so that all managers can access the data. If things go smoothly, perhaps one day the paper reports will be eliminated, Gard says. Will another long-standing research practice fall by the wayside?