Ep 28: Facilities No Longer Behind the Scenes: Role of Hospitality Training with Cushman & Wakefield’s Jessica Kane

In episode 28, I’m very excited to welcome Cushman & Wakefield’s Jessica Kane. She is a creative and talented workplace experience manager for the Ericsson account at Cushman & Wakefield, where she’s responsible for creating a workplace experience program that leverages technology, workplace design, and amenities and services to help drive employee engagement and retention at Ericsson, ensuring everyone feels productive, healthy, and happy in a frictionless workplace. 

We met recently at the WorkX conference in Dallas, where she shared a compelling facilities management perspective not yet told on this pod—the very important topic of hospitality training in the workplace.

“Hospitality customer service is so key. So many facilities leaders were so used to being behind the scenes, and now they’re at the forefront.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

A quick note: We’ve rebranded the podcast to the Heroes of Modern Work. The term’ hybrid work’ is becoming somewhat antiquated and is only part of a bigger picture. Today, successful organizations and managers lead with data, intentionality, technology, training, and the right communication to create great modern work experiences.

From Event Planning to Workplace Experience: Jessica’s Journey Into Facilities Management

Jessica Kane shared her journey into workplace experience. She started her career at Six Flags working in customer service and guest relations. That opportunity led her to event planning for the next 15 years at various companies.

Right before the pandemic, Jessica joined JLL as their Conference and Event Service Manager for their PepsiCo account. In that role, she worked out of the Frito Lay offices managing the conference center, which sparked her interest in the real estate realm of things.

Nine months into that role, the pandemic hit, and no one was onsite. Events came to a halt. Jessica began developing a workplace experience so team members would feel safe returning to the office. Eventually, she transferred over to the Ericsson team as their workplace experience manager.

“All of a sudden, facilities had a face. Usually, they were kind of behind the scenes. People are no longer in the office, but they know somebody’s there managing things and checking on things for them.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

How Hospitality Training Factors Into the Evolving Role of FMs

Jessica Kane shared the importance of customer service in the office from various high-level touch points—front of house, conference services, food and beverage, janitorial security, facilities technicians, and more. They all help build the client’s or company’s brand, culture, and employee experience. Offering a high level of customer service makes team members in the office feel welcomed, safe, and secure.

Jessica explained the foundations of customer service and hospitality training that facilities leaders need to succeed. There are five main key points:

1. Listen: Participate fully and be present in the moment.
2. Empathize: Let the other person feel like you’re on their side.
3. Address: Give a timeline or process so the person knows you understood them.
4. Anticipate: Get ahead of the situation by anticipating questions that may come up.
5. Modeling: Model acts that can inspire other team members.

“Take ownership of those situations. Sometimes, we get situations that aren’t necessarily in our wheelhouse, but we know how to direct them to the next person who will assist them. Also, follow up on those situations to make sure that our team members are being taken care of.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

How To Use TRACOM’s Social Styles To Improve Workplace Communication

Jessica Kane discussed the importance of hospitality training for facilities and workplace leaders. She shared Tracom’s Social Styles model, which includes four styles, each representing a different approach to communication and interpersonal relationships, with unique strengths and potential areas for development. They are:

• The Expressive has their feelings on their sleeves and is quick to make decisions. They want to get things done but can seem a little much due to their outspokenness. 
• The Driver is usually who you think of as your managers or leaders. They know exactly what they want and how to get it, and they want it immediately.
• The Amiable one builds rapport with everyone else around them. They want everybody’s feedback and want everyone to feel included.
• The Analytical person is usually seen as the shy and quiet type. They want to get the information first and have time to process it.

Jessica Kane explained that understanding these four social styles has helped their customer service team members learn to better interact with customers. She shared her experience participating in an exercise where she discovered she came out as ‘amiable’ with three different groups of people. She realized her communication blind spot and became more aware of the need to adapt better to different customers’ needs.

“I was amiable across all three different groups. That’s making me realize my communication blind spot. So it’s teaching me to be more self-aware, identify the nonverbal cues and tones, and verbal cues to adjust my communication style and interaction with our guests, customers, and team members.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

“Plus It” Process Thinking To Improve Customer Service in the Workplace

Jessica Kane likens her process for improving customer service to Disney’s concept of “plussing,” which is a technique to iterate on ideas without using any harsh criticism.

“Disney is the end all be all of guest service. Everyone always compares to Disney. He had this concept called ‘Plussing.’ The idea behind that was for his amusement parks. He said these were living, breathing things that keep growing. It keeps developing, and you can keep enhancing it and evaluating how to make it better. Office buildings are the same way, too.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

Her process thinking encompasses dissecting the different processes and services they offer and ensuring they’re hitting every single process that makes sense and makes it an easier and higher-level experience for their customers. It’s not just about sticking to how things have always been done. Jessica mentions Tom Wujec’s TED Talk “Draw how to make toast” as a great way of developing work on process thinking with your teams. 

The POW WOW Effect in Customer Service

Jessica Kane highlighted Ross Shafer’s “The POW WOW Effect” to add on to the importance of improving customer service. The learning from this is to avoid misaligned values. In the name of creating ‘wow moments’ for guests, people may end up underdelivering—creating ‘pow moments’—in other more important aspects.

“We’re so focused sometimes on making it a WOW moment and going over the top and making it exceptional that we’re underdelivering and creating these POW moments.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

Jessica Kane explained that the focus should be on analyzing the customer feedback that you’re getting. From there, you need to assess the issue and focus on how you can actually fix it. The key is to create consistency, not drop the ball constantly, and ensure that customers are always feeling taken care of.

Facilities Leaders’ Responsibility in “Team Member Care”

Jessica Kane emphasized the importance of ‘team member care’ in hospitality. She acknowledged that team members already have much to think about when delivering customer service. As a leader, you have to be aware of where they’re at. That means asking yourself: What’s their stress level? What’s their physical demeanor at that point? What’s their emotional demeanor?

Then, it’s recognizing that maybe your team member needs to take a few minutes to step away. She encourages facilities leaders to be aware and mindful of what’s going on with their team members because they won’t offer the best customer service if they’re not at their top level.

“Keeping that consistency makes it easier for them to be more productive. They already know what they’re going to expect when coming in. There’s not gonna be all these surprises that are coming at them.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

How To Make Office Design Support the Employee Experience

Jessica Kane again emphasized understanding the team members’ journey to facilities leaders can develop spaces that support modern work.

“Assess those situations to give them a better experience, make them feel welcome coming into the office, and give them the space they need. Everyone got so used to their own personal offices, and then suddenly you come in and want something a little bit more custom.” - Jessica Kane, Sr. Workplace Experience Manager at Cushman & Wakefield

She noticed that companies immediately jumped into designing something that had a cool look or was what everyone else was doing. However, much ended up being counterproductive for them. To mitigate that, leaders should focus on what’s helping employees be productive when assessing their journey. 

Future Trends and Predictions: Keeping the Human Touch

Looking into the future, Jessica Kane believes that hospitality will keep evolving, especially with technology. However, it’s still important to keep the “human touch”—the person aspect of it—to have that higher level of care. Customers don’t want to feel like they’re just another number passed along through the system. She recommended Jeff Toister’s hospitality training as a great starting point for elevating the level of hospitality that your organization offers in the workplace.