“Why numbers?” you ask. They can definitely make things more interesting – maybe even create some friendly competition? I was reading Chris Guillebeau’s blog, Why Focus on the Numbers, and it got me thinking about, you guessed it, numbers, and how they are important to us.
Sixthman has Ninjas.
If you have ever called into our office for questions regarding your cruise reservation, or maybe you just wanted to tell us how awesome the newest line-up additions were to your event, then you’ve talked to one of our customer service Ninjas. That’s right, Ninjas! Not the kind that wears all black and slices you with swords, but the kind that helps create kick-ass experiences for you on board.
In order to be the best we can be, we strive to know you beforehand as well. To accomplish this, we ALL have call center shifts during the week so that we can get to know our guests a little bit better each day. But, this tends to create some competition.
Call center shift competition? Sounds pretty ruthless, right! At the end of the day we send an email out to the entire company letting everyone know how many calls each ninja took, their average talk time, how many calls they placed on hold, if any calls were missed… you get the point. It’s fun! We take pride in it. We strive to do better. Most importantly, these numbers give us milestones to reach.
Sixthman has Warriors.
When we’re on the phones we’re called Ninjas, but when we get back into experience creation mode we’re called Warriors. Yeah, something like this. Again, a chance for some friendly competition. Not like how many kills you had (we are friendly), but more like, what are your cabins sales looking like? We’ve got numbers we look at for this – the Revenue Management Quotient being one. This number helps us track the sales of an event and see where we stand on a 7-day trend and also on a 30-day trend. Sounds boring, but it helps motivate us and makes us ask questions (a lot of times to y’all) in order to find out if there something we could be doing to make events kick more butt, or if there something that we haven’t done to will bring it to the next level.
Did I mention that Sixthman is competitive?
Have you heard about the bell? Every time we sell 100 cabins for any cruise, there is usually a scramble to ring the bell. Not sure where or how that got started, I only know that someone’s hair is being pulled or you’re getting tripped to ring that bell first. All in the name of cabin sales – ha! Let’s not get started on our competitive tendencies.
Bottom line – numbers gives us something to celebrate, a goal to work for, more milestones to help motivate (no matter how big or small they may be), and the drive to send 55,000 more guests on 255,000 more days of vacation.
What numbers motivate you?
-Mike