Ryan Shank was inspired by Steve Wynn's daily staff meetings where employees share customer service stories. A bellman drove eight hours round trip to deliver forgotten diabetes medication before a guest's 7 am deadline. Shank built ShareWillow to bring peer-driven recognition and storytelling to other companies.
Chapters
Today I want to go over how Steve Wynn inspired Sheri Willow. So I was watching a video of Steve Wynn. He owns Wynn Hotels, restaurants, casinos, all of that. And he was saying a story about something that he did that transformed his business. So what he started doing was he would do these daily meetings between managers and their direct reports, but at the, like, at the ground level, housekeepers, restaurant staff, everyone who works in the hotel. All of the people that are actually on the floors walking the hotels. He would do daily meetings and in the meetings he would ask if anyone has a story to tell. They would raise their hand and they would tell their story. And one of the stories that he talked about was, you know, someone said, hey, you know, in one of the meetings, hey, does anyone have a story to tell? And, you know, one of the, one of the bellmen raised their hands and said, hey, so I, you know, I was bringing the luggage up for this beautiful couple, an older couple from California. And I brought their bags to the room. And as, as we do, when I was leaving the room, I said, hey, uh, you know, did you guys forget anything? And the woman says, oh, Larry, would you know, I forgot my medication bag. And they're looking around. Oh my gosh, I must've left it right on the table at the house, uh, before we left. Oh my gosh, I have my diabetes medicine in that bag. And the bellman says, said, ma'am, don't you worry. Where do you guys live? And she said, Pacific Palisades. Pacific Palisades. Okay, great. I have a cousin that's in Encino. Let me, let me just give him a call. When do you need your medicine by? She said, by 7:00 AM tomorrow. I have to take it daily. He says, no problem, ma'am. Let me just give my cousin a call. So he went downstairs, he called his cousin. His cousin was, his cousin was there. He calls up to the room, ma'am, Is there anyone at your house right now? Yes, the housekeeper is at our house right now. Okay, don't you worry. I'm going to go and I'm going to see if my cousin can go to the house, see if the bag is there, and then I'm going to go get your medicine and, uh, and I'll bring it to you by 7:00 AM. So the bellman leaves his shift, drives 4 hours to Pacific Palisades, gets the bag, then drives 4 hours back to Las Vegas, gets back at 5:00 AM, gives it to the front desk and says, please take this up to this room, room 528, and give them— it's very important. It's the medicine. And he was able to get that medicine back to the couple in time for before 7:00 AM the next day. Now, a couple of things happen. The couple, do you think they're ever going to forget that experience? Do you think they're ever going to say, you know, oh, I didn't have a great experience at Wynn? That is a customer for life. And that customer is going to be speaking about Wynn for the rest of their life to their friends and family. That is a lifelong customer because you went above and beyond. And a couple other things happened in there right now. Let's go back to the meeting. That bellman was able to raise his hand and tell that story in front of all of his peers. He did an amazing thing. Everyone stood up, everyone clapped. Okay? Not only that, he's on the bulletin board in the back. He's on the company, You know, intranet, right? He's recognized by his peers. And you know what that does? Now, thousands of employees at Wynn Resorts and Hotels saw that happen. Do you know the dynamic of what started happening? Now you have hundreds or thousands of people every single day walking the floors, looking for their story, okay? They're looking for someone to help. Oh, there's a bath. Let me walk you to it. Oh, you want to go to the restaurant by the pool? It's not, "Down there, take a left." It's, "Let me show you the way." "Oh, you forgot? Let me get that." Now everyone is scouring the floors of the Wynn Hotel looking for their story. It changed the dynamic. It changed the behavior of the employees. Everyone is looking to help customers. The customers get a 5-star experience every single time on every single trip. If you ask anyone, even to today, if they stayed at Wynn Resorts, they never have a bad thing to say. Wind Resorts is on a different level. And that is one of the things that absolutely inspired me about just behavior changes and how do you deliver an extraordinary 5-star customer experience every single time. And there's ways to do it with incentives and with recognition programs for your employees that ultimately will take incredible care of your customer. And then that will lead to higher profits for the business. And I love this story from Steve Wynn. I love the dynamic. By the way, the employees have to raise their hand and tell the story. You don't have to do something in front of a manager and hope that the manager, oh, let me, let me nominate that person. Right. And then, then you sort of, oh, and then you get mad if I did something, but he didn't, just didn't see me. The dynamic of it is that they get to raise their hand and tell the story. It enables and allows them to tell this story in a way where they're not, you know, just bragging. That's, that's the meeting. The meeting is to tell the story. Very different than sort of spot you know, recognition programs by a manager where you have to, you know, nominate someone. You raise your hand, you tell the story. Now you have all of your people every single day looking for their story.
