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249: What It Really Takes to Scale Customer Experience Across 20,000 Team Members · Customer Service Revolution | Customer Experience & Employee Experience for Business Leaders

0:51
Welcome back, Revolutionaries, to another episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast.
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And today I'm so excited to have one of my favorite people.
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I've really gotten to know them the past two years.
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Jessica Shannon, Chief Experience Officer of Sandals Resorts International.
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Jessica leads the global strategy, design, and execution of new and innovative experiences across the customer lifestyle and overseas employee experience leading cultural
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transformation efforts.
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Welcome, Jess.
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Hi everyone, it's wonderful to be here and John, it's wonderful to see you again.
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Where are you at for our listeners today?
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I am in sunny Montego Bay,
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that's your headquarters, correct?
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is, this is our global headquarters.
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It's absolutely wonderful to be here and I can complain to no one whenever anyone asks me if I'm at work.
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say, well, yeah, I'm in Jamaica.
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can't complain.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And Jess, I love working with you and you inspire me.
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And I knew a little bit about your background, but not until I was preparing for this podcast.
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shame on me.
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I didn't know you went to Harvard.
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You got your MBA from Harvard.
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I know I didn't, I don't remember that you worked.
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Well, tell our listeners your background pre-Sandals.
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Sure, so I have to say I grew up in northern Minnesota, so go Vikings.
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Very proud Minnesotan at heart.
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early on in my career, so flashback, I love Minnesota and I can't wait to go visit again in a few months time.
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early on I will say two things are thematic across my career experience.
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One, which is service, near and dear to my heart, and I know we'll talk about that.
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And two, which is the Caribbean, which is interesting.
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When I was in university, recognized service was so important to me that I applied for and I was accepted into the Peace Corps.
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And so I lived for two years in Guyana, which is actually the head of the Caribbean community and got really steeped and passionate about Caribbean culture at that point in
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time, but was able to...
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ah
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sorry, was this before or after college?
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This is right after college.
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So first job after college was Peace Corps.
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So I was a volunteer.
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Harvard or before your MBA?
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It was after University of Minnesota, graduated from Minnesota and before Harvard.
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So in between, I would say in between the two.
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ah And I lived in Guyana for a couple of years, which was great.
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And they said, what do you want to do?
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I said, you know what, I'm going to be good karma.
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I will do anything you want and live anywhere you want.
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said anywhere?
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I said yes, that's where I can have the most impact.
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And I ended up as a maternal child health volunteer in the interiors of Guyana, which is 85 % untouched rainforest, something I never thought I would do.
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didn't have the tools and equipment to be able to do it, but there I was.
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what are your parents thinking at this time?
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They spent this money, put you through college, have these high hopes, not that, but they gotta be thinking, wait a minute, she's calling an audible here.
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Were they worried at all or proud?
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Um, you know, they were incredibly proud.
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My mother has a very free spirit, so she actually bought me a suitcase and said, that sounds wonderful.
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And my father has such a, I'd say,
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kind of purpose-driven life that he thought it was absolutely wonderful to think about dedicating two years specifically to serving others.
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So I had no hurdles on that front.
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Yeah.
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I think it was a lot different back then because we didn't have instant messaging.
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We didn't have internet connectivity.
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And so, you know, they would send me a newspaper and I'd get it three weeks later.
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And that's how I got about anything that was happening.
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So that was obviously a difference from then to now that has changed pretty dramatically.
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But coming out of Guyana, it was one of the most impactful and high learning times of life.
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If you could summarize, what was your biggest aha in that?
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I'd say a few different things.
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um
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gratitude, appreciation, meeting people where they are because if you can't communicate with different people, you can't get your message across, you're not gonna be successful.
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So really learning and understanding who people are and how to serve them in a way that's gonna be most impactful to them, not how kind of your notion is, which I think is an
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important theme.
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Also that everything about life, if you're curious, is a learning opportunity and you can learn from anyone and everyone and that is so important.
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And I would say the importance of humility.
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has been hugely impactful.
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life lessons you got in your young 20s.
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I that stuff I'm still discovering and that you got it at such a young age.
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It has served me tenfold over again.
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You know, the good karma of trying to serve others.
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I think I learned and I grew more from Peace Corps than I was able to contribute.
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In fact, I will tell you, I tell everyone when I retire, I'm joining Peace Corps again.
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And so I look forward to being able to contribute in a different way at a later stage in life because it was so tremendously impactful to my own life.
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Hmm, okay, you get out of the Peace Corps.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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actually a consultant for the better part of 20 years after that.
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And I will say consulting, which you know extremely well, is an amazing way, it's a boot camp of learning across industries, across really complex business challenges, and across
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different functions.
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And so I got to see a whole host of industries before dedicating the hospitality.
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BCG and PWC.
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BCG, Boston Consulting Group.
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right, that's right, that's right, I'm sorry.
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Okay, okay.
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Yes.
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And so I got to learn about every different industry, all sorts of different problems.
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It was actually one of my clients who was was really insightful, told me something that I'll always remember.
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And I take it with me in the service DNA kind of elements that we've talked about.
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He said, you know, one of the things you need to remember is everything in life comes down to sales or service as a business problem.
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And he said, if your service isn't quality, if your service isn't good, your selling isn't sustainable.
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And I never forgot that because the funny thing about it was he was in internal audit.
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And you don't intuitively think of internal audit as a service function in the sense that they're not guest service facing.
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But he viewed everyone in the organization as his customer.
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And if he didn't provide a strong enough service, they weren't going to invite internal audit to come back.
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And he had that mindset and he had still that it'd be very clearly.
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And I thought, well, that is a wonderful piece to think about when you're thinking about every business situation.
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So kind of in the later tenure in consulting, actually ended up leading our Ebola crisis response and recovery efforts in West Africa.
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One of the most complex challenges, I think, pre-COVID that we had faced.
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And so flying in there.
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One of the things that we had to focus on was if you think about who the customer is there, is the, they were the communities that were being impacted and absolutely ravaged
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by the Ebola pandemic and crisis.
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And so we had to very quickly understand what that journey looks like to get healthcare workers supplies into what they call the hot zones.
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how to engender the trust of the communities to allow people in.
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And so worked with West Africa, was made in Haba Dada, Ghana, but in Sierra Leone, in Guinea, in Liberia, to really work with the local teams to get healthcare workers into
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communities that were most, Pricewaterhouse, PwC.
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And so we're doing that.
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And then flash forward a couple of years later, I'm in Jamaica working on a number of projects and COVID hits.
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So the tourism community came to me and said, Jess, we understand you have some experience in global pandemics.
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I said, yes, I do.
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And they said, can we chat?
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And we ended up kind of looking at the exam question for Jamaica in a really interesting way.
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And it was a public-private partnership.
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But the tourism community knew we had six weeks in May of 2020 to reopen our borders.
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And we had to do so in such a way that our guests felt safe and taken care of, but also having an enjoyable
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because let's face it, no one's going to go to a vacation destination if they have to be isolated their entire time.
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So how do you balance that life and livelihood on the guest side and also the team members?
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The team members had to be taken care of and safe and their related communities because they were going to go back into their communities by night.
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And so working together with the entire hospitality space in Jamaica in six weeks.
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We put together 200 pages of protocols and customer journey maps and employee journey maps to say, what does the next year or two years look like of a COVID pandemic with open
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borders and encouraging tourism to maintain the economy?
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We did the 200 pages.
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We trained everyone.
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We reopened the borders with the new protocols and managed a highly successful tourism rebound and a 1 % positivity rate or less within the COVID corridor.
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So super successful.
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Adam Stewart, who's
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executive chairman, an absolute visionary as well.
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He was a part of the working committee and so he and I knew each other quite well through that.
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It's a battlefield experience.
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uh
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Stewart is the executive vice chairman, is that the correct title?
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Chairman of Sandals Resort.
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Right, yeah.
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he oversees and he's also, so his father was the founder of the company.
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So Sandals is still a family run business.
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So he is the son of the founder.
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So he has very much carried that continuity of family spirit forward within the business.
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But he and I were talking about it and as we were recreating the future of tourism because so much changed in the hospitality space post COVID that we were really reinventing the
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future at a national level.
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And he said, you know what?
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I think we need this type of role internal to the company.
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Can we talk about what that scope and what that could really be and look like?
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And so then we crafted the chief experience officer role and I came on board at Sandals.
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Were you the first chief experience officer of Sandals Resorts?
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And you know what I love?
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I wrote an article a couple of years ago, and I know you know this.
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for, let's say from probably maybe late 2000s, probably late, uh you know, just before the pandemic, the chief experience officer, and some people use it as the customer experience
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officer, whatever they called it, or chief customer officer, was the fastest growing C-suite
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position, at least in corporate America.
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That's why we started the Customer Experience Executive Academy, which you sent Karima through.
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because, you know, there's no undergraduate or really, you know, masters.
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And so that kind of replaced it.
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But on the flip side, besides it being the fastest growing, it also was the first one cut when, you know, shit hit the fan.
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And I don't think it was any
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I think it was just because people didn't know how to create a position that was accountable, measurable.
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I don't think it was necessarily the employee, it was corporate America.
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And so I wrote an article that I saw the CXO position evolving to an ecosystem of experience, not just the customer experience.
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And that's why
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when I met you and saw that you are both over the customer and the team member experience, I'm like, that's what I was talking about, because it can't just be one.
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It can't just be one.
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No, it can't.
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And you know, I think you're perfectly right on the accountability.
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So one of the things that we did in that first year was spend time defining what the experience officer did and what they did not do.
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ah Because in one sense, know, CX is everyone's job, but then no one person is accountable for it, right?
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So what does that role look like?
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And, you know, it's not a replacement for operations.
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It's not a replacement for any other function.
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It is a distinct and unique function.
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So
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We carved out, let's say four big verticals um that help to drive value and serve in some ways as that intersection between strategy and operations or brand and operations in some
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senses.
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So it's that connective tissue.
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So we have a CX function, which is on the customer side, which is guest experience.
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And it is laser focused on continuous improvement of the guest experience.
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So stepping away from the day-to-day kind of churning of operations.
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what does that look like and how do we continuously improve it?
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We then similarly, but flip side of that, look at employee experience.
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And both of them, I should say, is the entire life cycle.
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someone is looking at booking a vacation at Sandals all the way back to their returning home and they are planning their next adventure.
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So it's cutting across all departments and looking at that entire customer journey from a cross-cutting standpoint.
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And the same with employees, it's higher to retire.
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So the entire journey, what does that look like and how do we continuously and relentlessly
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I love that.
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How do we relentlessly and consistently stay focused on continuous improvement?
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So those two verticals, and then I think everyone probably has to have this function at this point in time.
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If they don't, it's data analytics.
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And we call it integrated analytics because the world has so much data now and almost no insight.
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Because you look at data and you say, okay, well, our NPS is this.
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Well, our financial position is this.
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Well, our operational efficiency is this.
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and you look at all of these different data pieces, our team member engagement score is this, but no one puts it all together to help solve the Rubik's Cube of a puzzle.
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And so he said, let's have an integrated analytics function to help, let's say systematize some of the changes, help guide some of the investments that we need to make.
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What is the insight?
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What is the information?
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What does the data tell us?
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So we have that piece.
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And then last but not least is product development.
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And so if we are looking at a new,
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resort in the next three to five years, or we're looking at a new program that needs to happen now, what is the, what is a, we like to call them our imagineers, but what does the
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Imagineering team think is the right next thing?
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What is the right master plan?
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How many restaurants do we need to have?
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What types of new water sport activities do we need to do?
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What types of surprise and delights should we be creating for our guests?
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And so we
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we create the kind of master plans and the strategy and the vision for new properties, new products, new experiences.
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So those were kind of our discrete boxes, but we don't run operations day to day.
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We may help measure it and help provide them with information to enable them to be more successful.
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But we're not a replacement, but we're an adjacency and a complementary function to both operations HR and then brand.
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So for our listeners who I'm sure everyone's heard of Sandals, hopefully a lot have been there and you absolutely need to, how many locations throughout the Caribbean do Sandals
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have?
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So Sandals is a team, I should say Sandals and Beaches, because we have two kind of distinct product lines, Sandals and Beaches.
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And so we are across the Caribbean, so we're focused on our Caribbean playground.
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And we have 20,000 team members focused on across our locations.
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our Sandals is an adults-only, all-inclusive vacation experience.
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so it focuses on, we have
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dining, experience, excursions, transportation, everything from beginning to the end of the experience is covered.
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We do have island inclusive as well.
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So we actually take guests off resort and to local restaurants or local experiences to make sure that they don't just experience the resort, but they experience the holistic
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destination.
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And then beaches is our family friendly proposition.
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I would say family centric proposition.
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And that one is one that is small, but in heavy growth mode.
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So many total locations as of April 2026?
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19?
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Is it 19?
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it's 19 but soon I would say in the next two years we have a number of locations in the pipeline looking at, I'm not sharing anything that's not public knowledge, but we're
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looking at a new beaches destination in the Bahamas, in Barbados, another in Jamaica and one in St.
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Vincent.
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and we're kind of then on the Sandals side we're
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doubling the size of our resorts at at least two destinations in the coming two years.
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Yeah, yeah, and I've been, you know, working with you guys the past two years, maybe seven to ten.
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And I can't tell you which is my favorite.
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mean, they're just, mean, visually and experientially.
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One little side note that so you just we just helped create and launch.
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so many things, the service DNA, and we're to get to it, but you just made me think of it with Price Waterhouse.
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The day in the life of a Sandals Beaches customer, which is, you know, for our listeners, you know, all our clients do it.
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It's so important to, you know, get your team members to understand, right?
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And it's, so this is 17 years ago is where I first came up with it, this whole concept.
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I was working for Price Waterhouse, okay?
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going into Price Waterhouse, this is what I'm expecting.
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I don't know why, but I'm like, all right, I'm gonna be, you know, go to work with these accountants.
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And I thought they're all gonna be 50, 60 year old men who, that's just what I was expecting.
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And when I went in, I'm working, they look, they're all recent college graduates.
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who, you know, right or wrong, there's nothing wrong about it, but their customer are CEOs, CFOs of publicly traded companies on Wall Street who are 50, 60 and 70 year old, you
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know, probably mostly men.
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And they have no idea what it's like
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to be a CFO, CEO of a publicly traded company, let alone what it's like to be a 55 plus man or woman.
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And so when I was realizing this, I'm like, my God, we need to create a day in the life of, so these 25 year old recent college graduates who, no fault of their own, could better
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understand the pressures of Wall Street and shareholders and uh performance and.
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let alone raising kids, grandparents, you know, all those things.
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That's where it came.
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So Sandals has always been a brand, I believe, very focused on a great customer experience.
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They seem to have really doubled down in the past couple of years.
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Why?
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was it competition?
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What made them double down?
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I know the stewards were always, you know, built their company on a great experience.
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No, you know, I appreciate you saying that our founder was laser focused on guest experience but also the team members and their communities.
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So our kind of ethos on the team members side from the beginning is you hire for attitude and you train for skill.
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So Adam actually founded the Sandals Corporate University to say everyone can start here with no education and end up with a college degree because we believe in unleashing the
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superpower of people so to say.
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But I will completely acknowledge and agree with you.
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We have doubled down and become laser focused on it.
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And I think a couple of things happened.
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You know, one, the business is growing.
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The business is growing by leaps and bounds and dramatically.
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And Adam has coined a phrase which many people have heard about Sandals 2.0.
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And what that means, you do have to define exactly what that means because when you're a business and you're running two or three destinations, intuition and sheer grit can help
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to infuse a service culture.
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when you start expanding and you're doubling and you're tripling in size, you have to be much more intentional and must more systematic about things.
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And so part of it is the growth and making sure that we don't lose what is so important to us.
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I think the second thing would be...
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post-COVID world did shift a lot of things, right?
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Guest expectations are very different in a post-COVID world.
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So our customers expect a different experience than they did five years ago, 10 years ago.
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And social media dictates different experiences than it did because now they can look and they can see what's happening anywhere else in the world relative to Sandals.
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And so I think those two things were certainly catalysts.
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Adam has been a sheer visionary in terms of what does Sandals 2.0 look like and helping to codify that.
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And he has...
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always had a human centric point of view.
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And so kind of, well, we can look at all the data in the world, but what does that heart and mind look like has been kind of front and center from him and his philosophy.
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And so it is the market changing and pivoting and adjusting.
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is our size and our scale growing and making sure that we retain that.
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So 2.0 for us really is looking at what is the best of our core that we need to keep and we need to institutionalize, we need to codify, but then how do we reinvent
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different things to make sure that we're taking the best of what exists and the best of what our potential is and putting those two things together into service.
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And I do, John, I have to give you a shameless plug, our service DNA journey with you as we recognize this and as we looked at it and as we saw turnover and making sure that...
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there was a consistency in our service.
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We turned to you and we looked at a variety of different firms and different teams and different partners and we just gravitated to you right away.
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From what you had done and what you could do and it's your passion for which you had.
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And we have...
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been so, so, so fortunate and so grateful that we have been a partner with you on this journey.
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We'll talk about some of the things that we're looking to do in the next six months, nine months, 12 months, and some of the things we have done, but we wouldn't have been here
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without you and without the power of teamwork.
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So a huge thank you.
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thank you.
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Thank you.
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And what I always say is no one bad calls us.
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know, Spirit Airlines isn't, you know, calling us.
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You guys were already so good.
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and but it's it's mind boggling.
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mean, 20,000 team members, 19 properties.
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I just posted a a quote or a quick video reel yesterday.
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They got so much likes.
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I always say nothing will ruin your customer experience faster than rapid growth.
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And it's so true.
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like and my businesses are, you know, tiny compared to 20,000 team members and almost 20 properties.
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But I remember back when we started and we needed a receptionist or, whenever we'd interview 20 people to find the perfect person.
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Now you fast forward five, 10, 15 years and we need to hire 10, 15, 20.
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Let's say we need to hire 20 employees.
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We're probably high interview, or we did interview 25.
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And the only reason why we interviewed 25 was because five of them didn't want the job.
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And all of sudden you wake up one day and you're like, who are these people?
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And they don't have the same, and we didn't have, we were compromising and making excuses.
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So, I mean, it's so.
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so hard.
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I compare it to, and again, it's nothing like what you have to deal with churning a yacht in a bathtub.
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I mean, it's not like sending a memo out and tell everyone we're doing this, you know, effective Monday.
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No, and we have the benefit at Sandals of having such long tenure and longevity.
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think when I started at the kind of manager and above rank, the average tenure at our corporate office was like 20 years, which you never see anymore, but it's uh a testimony
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to the dedication of the team.
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as you grow and you scale, as you said, you have to ramp up, you have to scale up, and you're not going to know every single team member on that individual basis to be able to.
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So how do you create a system of mentorship so that you have every
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believing in the power of mentorship and the power of coaching and also in the power of guest experience and guest service.
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I think that was part of the exam question that we were working with you to solve.
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And we think we have it.
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We're so excited.
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And something that you have that I want you to help our listeners, people in your shoes that are trying to do the same.
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I always say, don't go down this project, don't hire us if you don't have three things.
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And these three things, each of them are so big and you gotta have senior executive buy-in, which I probably think is the hardest because if you don't, it's not like you can
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what you know, you're screwed, right?
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And so, know, Adam and Stephen and yourself, I mean, if you don't have that, you know, so that's one.
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The next one is the right project lead and kind of steering committee to that person that's going to champion it, that has the bandwidth, that it's not going to change from
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week to week.
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Oh, where did Karima go?
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Oh, you know, we had a fire, you know, and we had to put her on this.
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to, you know, so now you're gonna be dealing with, you know, so and so this, you know, for while.
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You can't have that, right?
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And then, you know, so senior level, a buy-in, and that's not, as you know, telling my listeners more than you, that's not just writing a check, having a budget.
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It means every time they speak, like when Adam speaks, he's tying.
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whatever the topic is back to how it impacts the experience, right?
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So senior level buy-in, a project lead in a steering committee, and then, and then, I was gonna say, I say all three are the most important, is frontline buy-in.
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Now you have 20,000 team members back in the house, front of the house, that have to drink the Kool-Aid and understand the why of, you know,
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Where do you start?
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How did you?
25:21
Because that was your job.
25:22
That was your job to be the orchestrator of all three of those.
25:27
Well, you know, we are blessed like I said, know our Philosophically at the ethos of the company has always been CX forward So the good thing is there was there was a recognition
25:38
of buy-in now I do think with everyone and we think about obstacles When there are pressures day to day, it's when people start to deviate right?
25:45
So if you look at a long-term time horizon, of course Guest service and guest experience makes absolute sense
25:51
But then when you look at a month and you need to cut time and you need to cut costs and you need to become efficient, that's when it's Or uh you have a hurricane or you have a
25:59
hurricane or you have the largest and the strongest hurricane that the world has ever seen impacting our headquarters, our global headquarters.
26:10
But it's hard to stay focused, right?
26:13
And so with all the best intention in the world, kind of
26:15
We came in with a lot of political capital, a lot of political will, but then we had the strategies to make sure that it was a continued North Star without deviations.
26:24
That was very important.
26:25
Karima has, I mean, and you know her and you've worked with her, she's an absolute force of nature, right?
26:31
But she had immediate credibility because she's worked within operations, she's worked within CX, she understands exactly what the team members are going through, what the
26:40
guests are going through, and how to help bridge that gap.
26:44
Having the right person in that role that can communicate with passion and experience and genuine credibility has been super important for us and she's great and couldn't be here
26:54
without her.
26:55
But then also, as you said, the team members, from my perspective and going back to some of my old years in consulting, no matter how much data we use, you have to think about
27:04
human-centric design because if you create an SOP,
27:08
that's fine, people will go through a process and people will become adherent to it.
27:11
You create the accountabilities, that's fine, people will comply.
27:14
But if you don't actually tap into the hearts and the minds and the passion, it's not gonna be real and it's not gonna give you any of the value that you're looking for.
27:22
And so creating a CX culture and creating a service DNA that really speaks to the hearts and the minds of team members and ignites their superpowers and ignites their passions is
27:32
what we think is the most important thing of harnessing the power of those 20,000 because
27:36
It certainly couldn't be leadership sitting in a room.
27:38
It certainly couldn't be Karima sitting in a room.
27:41
It takes the power of every.
27:43
Joss, you and Karima and your team is we had a lot of workshops, but it wasn't the people in the ivory tower.
27:51
You had representation from almost all the properties.
27:55
You flew them in.
27:57
And I mean, you're talking frontline, valet, people that work on the phones, food and beverage.
28:04
front line, non-management leadership titles in that room, which was so brilliant because it was created by them for them.
28:14
It was and I would say it was it was great in a couple of different ways one you had You broke down barriers and broke down silos because so many different things You you step it
28:22
apart from sandals and looking at industry so many different.
28:24
Let's say service failures come from a gap between departments So one department is responsible for one element one another but what happens in the cracks in between and so
28:34
this really thought about that entire journey breaking down those barriers and talking really truly about
28:40
where the secret sauce is, where the pain points were, which was great, in different roles that people were on that front line.
28:48
But also, we allowed our general managers to help select the team members who would be most appropriate for this because it also, change shouldn't happen to someone, it should
28:57
happen with them, right?
28:58
And that is, for me, a secret ingredient to success is making sure that change is happening with people.
29:03
So having the right team members that were representative.
29:06
across the departments and across levels of seniority were important, but also allowing the general managers to say, are the right people to have at that table who are really
29:14
going to help kind of be those super connectors within our various departments was important to us.
29:19
As you said, actually intentionally, we had a few general managers sprinkled in and out there across tenure, but we intentionally didn't have leadership sitting in a room
29:27
throughout all of the workshops because people needed to be able to speak freely and creatively and not feel nervous and not feel intimidated by
29:34
a back row of people thinking about it, looking at them.
29:37
So they were free to be creative and passionate and discuss and debate and really help co-create our new service statement.
29:45
Our pillars are always and never steeped in their experiences across their functions, across their destinations, across their levels of experience.
29:54
And I think that is what was so powerful is it really is now a service statement that is aligned with our brand, but is something that is
30:02
going to be expressed through them because it's something they created and believed in.
30:05
The other thing that I think was unique and important for us is this is internal and external customer.
30:11
So this is a philosophy that is governing how we treat our guests but also how we treat one another as team members.
30:17
is why, correct me if I'm wrong, we didn't call it guest experience because that would only signal external.
30:25
We called it customer, which included team members, vendors, third party, anyone you come in contact with if you're representing a Sando brand.
30:33
That's exactly right and you talked about the day in the life video and you know almost no one can watch our day in the life video without shedding a tear and smiling at the same
30:44
time which is what you need but we were very intentional in working with you about curating experiences that were gonna land that were very representative of guest
30:53
experiences and team member experiences so
30:56
You're looking at both sides and I think as you rightly pointed out with your Pricewaterhouse example, our team members don't have the life that our guest does and our
31:05
guest doesn't have the life that the team member does.
31:07
But helping to understand that one, people are people everywhere, but everyone has their own human situation ongoing and making that so visceral and so real.
31:18
I think we wouldn't have been able to do that if we hadn't thought about the guest and the team member and hadn't had that representation in the room to say, what are the best
31:24
examples?
31:25
that we should and could be sharing.
31:26
So it was a beautiful experience.
31:29
golden nuggets.
31:30
Right now you're an ATM machine of just uh wisdom.
31:33
But I want my listeners to hear it again.
31:36
You said, which is true, I was there and you had frontline, guest facing and back of the house team members in the workshop helping create what was then launched.
31:48
you absolutely did.
31:49
Any high level leadership,
31:51
was that it was not a lot, but they were in the back and they were silent as crickets to not intimidate, steer, what I like to call drop an anchor.
32:02
Someone told me I do that and I didn't realize.
32:04
They say, you know, I'll be in a meeting and I'll say, hey, we have a problem guys.
32:08
You know, what I think we should do is this, but you tell me.
32:12
And then they say,
32:13
You're dropping an anchor and I'm like, what do mean?
32:15
They're all gonna agree with you.
32:17
I'm like, my God.
32:19
So bite your tongue and let them come up with it if you wanna add at the end.
32:24
And so that was so important.
32:26
And the other thing you said that I love is SOPs versus meaningful moments.
32:32
And you gotta have both, right?
32:34
But an employee, team member of any of our businesses doesn't go home at night and say, honey, or mom and dad, you wouldn't believe that I was 20 for 20 today on getting the
32:46
credit card when I checked them in and verifying their driver's license.
32:51
That doesn't give me a bounce in my step and feel, but creating Caribbean moments and defining what that could be.
33:00
and and you know all those things that that at not only does it help the the the guest who's paying a lot of money for this trip but it it gives them meaning in their job
33:14
Well, in thinking about creating Caribbean moments, also gives our team members a sense of pride because 98 % of our team members are Caribbean nationals.
33:23
And so helping to create a moment that is authentic to their lived experience is something that everyone can anchor around.
33:30
I think in the olden days, so take 20 years ago, an all-inclusive resort vacation destination.
33:36
uh Guests could come to Jamaica, but they weren't going to Italy, they weren't going to France, they weren't going to Holland, and so we would bring the best of the world into
33:43
the destination.
33:44
To say, you can come to Jamaica and you can get an experience of the entire universe.
33:49
But now, in the way the world has changed, people can go to Italy, or they can go to Jamaica, or they can go to India and have different experiences.
33:57
So when they come to the Caribbean, they want a Caribbean experience.
34:00
so...
34:01
resetting that star to say, you know what, we're focused on who we are and what we can truly be and kind of ownably unique is that creating Caribbean moments.
34:12
So I think it also invokes, it sorts through the noise, reduces confusion and invokes pride in the team.
34:18
Yeah, yeah.
34:19
I mean, it's just, you know, another thing you have to deal with.
34:22
you know, I call it with pleasure by experiences, going to the spa, meeting for Starbucks, you know, going, going, going on a resort vacation.
34:32
And then you have grudge by, which is I got, you know, I throbbing toothache.
34:36
I walk out to my car and, you know, cause I got a busy day and I'm already running late and I have a flat tire.
34:43
That's a grudge buy.
34:44
But I always say grudge buy has advantages because they're dealing with people in their most vulnerable point.
34:51
And so if I can get you back on the road, a dentist can get the pain gone and you hole sooner than you thought, there's something there.
35:02
But a pleasure buy,
35:04
Mm-hmm.
35:04
hard to, you know, if, you know, I've heard about Disney, Disney is the greatest place.
35:09
I'm finally going to Disney.
35:11
I'm expecting perfection.
35:13
I'm going to, you know, Barbados or Turks and Caicos and to beaches or Barbados.
35:22
And I'm expecting, you know, just perfection and, you know, to be perfect.
35:29
I don't even know how many hours in a week is, know, to be perfect in 24 hours.
35:36
That one thing when you have 20 different business units all under the same roof, you know, from dining to, know, it's just, it's so, so hard to do.
35:48
You know you hit the nail on the head in that When it's a grudge by or when someone's in crisis or when someone's in need I mean laughingly there's nowhere to go but up right like
35:57
you're You're helping themself a problem.
35:59
So there's nowhere you can go up unless you absolutely fail at your job ah But in our world and you know, we are very fortunate that our guests typically book 12 to 18 months
36:10
in advance
36:11
But that means they have 12 to 18 months to build expectation of what this is going to be.
36:16
You know, it's like a wedding.
36:17
12 to 18 months out, you start planning and so our guests are planning, they're dreaming and they're looking at their lives.
36:24
something goes wrong at home, I get a flat tire or I lose a client, the one thing I'm thinking in my back head, at least in two weeks, I have my sandals vacation, which is just
36:37
setting it up higher, because I got to get away from this stress.
36:41
Exactly.
36:42
And so if you don't deliver on that, emotionally,
36:46
Like what we do, you emotionally is we create lifetime memories, right?
36:50
Like those experiences are meant to be lifetime memories and we have an imperative in a positive way and a desire to make those the best memories they could possibly be.
37:00
But I think you're exactly right.
37:01
You cannot be perfect.
37:02
Like on a seven day, a 14 day vacation, there are going to be hiccups along the way.
37:06
And the important thing is how do you recover that?
37:09
And how do you recover that in a way that's going to be filled with surprise and delights?
37:13
If a guest is frustrated and you don't recover, kind of in that immediate term, the cost of recovery becomes exponentially greater, both financially and reputationally.
37:24
And guess what?
37:24
You've also ruined that lifelong memory aspiration that you had.
37:28
So that real-time service recovery is an area that we are and will continue to be laser focused on.
37:33
Well, know, working with you guys and right now we're in the part of the zero risk service recovery of our project, it made me realize that, you know, Sandals is, and every business
37:45
is, regardless of what industry they're in, they do have grudge buys because if I'm upset as a customer, now it's kind of a grudge buy situation.
37:56
I have to complain.
37:57
Can I see the manager?
37:59
Can I see, you why did this happen?
38:01
you know, blah, blah.
38:02
And then, you know, but you guys do such a good job and you're training your employees.
38:07
It's called the service recovery paradox that if my expectations are met, I may or may not be loyal.
38:14
I always say this to my team members.
38:16
The greatest customer loyalty strategy is screw up first.
38:20
Now I'm kidding.
38:22
I'm kidding.
38:23
But, but,
38:25
We've all had experiences where someone's dropped the ball and then they make it right.
38:31
And I'm 10 times more loyal than had they not dropped the ball at all.
38:34
So I just want people to see when we drop the ball or we screw up, that's an opportunity to own it and to own that customer for life.
38:42
Absolutely.
38:43
you know, the best customer is the returning customer, right?
38:46
And so if you can't create that loyalty, I mean, if someone leaves, they may not require a refund, but they're just not coming back.
38:53
It's like they're, if they're not happy with what you did or how you recovered, they're the silent quitters.
38:57
You know, they just don't come back and that's how you know.
39:00
And so we also...
39:02
brand terrorism back at home or on Facebook or whatever that all the marketing isn't gonna fix.
39:10
Well, know, it's funny you say that there was a survey that was done of all leisure travelers back in December of 2025.
39:16
So very recent.
39:17
And one of the things that was still mentioned in the world of social media and being able to see everything that everyone is experiencing still in all the number one way that
39:26
people select vacations are recommendations from friends and family.
39:30
And so to your point about that terrorism, it is real and it is one of the number one drivers or influencers of both returning business, but also new business.
39:39
So Jess, so we just recently, I think it was early March, the launch, think it was, um mid-March, where we launched your customer experience action statement, your pillars, your
39:53
day in the life, which was so cool, I cried.
39:56
And I'd seen it evolve and your never's and always and your non-negotiables.
40:01
We launched it there.
40:03
But as you know, more than anything, the launch was great.
40:07
The launch was as good as any.
40:09
The things you rolled out was as good as any.
40:11
But that, you know, I always stress to my clients, that's the easy part.
40:17
The fireworks show and the, you we could get everyone excited for, you know, the next week to 10 days, but that's deodorant.
40:27
The hard work actually starts after the launch because is anybody going to remember and be on the tip of their tongue six months, 12 months, 18 months from now?
40:37
So how do you take that launch and what are you doing to make sure that it is top of mind awareness, TOMA, you know, in 19 resorts, 20,000 team members, what are you doing to make
40:53
sure it's come August?
40:56
of 2026 and February of 2027, people know this.
41:02
Thanks for listening to part one of this fantastic interview with John DiJulius and Jess Shannon of Sandals Resorts International.
41:09
Be sure to come back next week for part two when Jess shares more with us, including the incredible way they were able to include their talented team members to create training
41:19
that really has staying power.
41:21
Thanks listeners, we'll see you next week.