Customer Service Academy

Saying "Great Work" Isn't Recognition What separates a truly memorable experience from one that simply checks the boxes? According to Robert Reitknecht, it has nothing to do with thread count, amenities, or the finishes on the wall — it has everything to do with how you make a guest feel in the moments that matter most. In this episode of Customer Service Academy, Tony Johnson sits down with Robert Reitknecht for a candid conversation about the gap between what leadership intends and what guests actually experience — and why closing that gap starts not with technology or process, but with people. Robert brings a luxury hospitality lens to some of the most grounding truths in the business: that processes should make an employee's job easier, not harder; that managers who stay behind their desks lose touch with the reality of their operations; and that the smallest operational changes can sometimes produce the biggest impact on the guest experience. In this episode: Why luxury is defined by emotional connection, not amenities or finishes How the "concept to experience gap" forms and what leaders can do to close it The power of getting out from behind the desk and catching your team doing something right Why talking to your frontline team is one of the most underutilized leadership tools available How the human connection remains the greatest competitive advantage any business has About Robert Reitknecht Robert Reitknecht is an award-winning hospitality leader, speaker, and founder of Hospitality Renu. With more than 20 years in luxury hospitality operations, Robert helps boutique and independent hotels turn their brand promise into a consistent, revenue-producing guest experience. Having worked his way up through the ranks with brands like Montage Resorts and Marriott International, he has led front office and rooms operations, trained hundreds of hospitality professionals, and supported organizations ranging from independent properties to marquee luxury brands.    📌 Connect with Robert: https://hospitalityrenu.com/    Perfect for: hospitality leaders, business owners, CEOS, COOs, CX/EX professionals, operational managers, retail and service teams, training and development leaders, and anyone responsible for people and performance (and sales growth). Book time with me to learn about our speaking, training, and consulting services: https://calendly.com/thetonyjohnson/strategy  Links & Resources: 📌 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-johnson-ccxp/ 📌 Order my book Together We Serve: https://amzn.to/4pwGvPL  📌 Book hospitality training for your team today: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/summits 📌 Order my book Proof Positive: https://amzn.to/3LWtP5l  📌 Get your restaurant healthcheck as mentioned in the show at https://www.4xi360.com/diagnostix    Tony Johnson is a Customer Experience + Hospitality Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author with a wide background including higher education, restaurants, retail, travel, city government, chambers of commerse, and leisure.  He regularly speaks and coaches organizations to IGNITE THEIR SERVICE using his common sense approach to Customer engagement and retentions.  Tony has spoken to government agencies, airlines, universities, and many Fortune 500 companies to unlock their amazing capacity for excellence.   Check out my FREE Resources and Training Tools: Web: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTonyJohnson Twitter:  https://twitter.com/The_TonyJohnson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/THE_TONYJOHNSON/ Tik Tok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@igniteyourservice

Half Time Is Over: Finish 2026 Strong Time is ticking away on 2026 and it might feel like you have just over 4 months left in the year, you really only have 3. The whistle blew on June 30th, and now is the time to take action if you want to impact what remains of 2026. Most leaders spend August telling themselves there's plenty of time, but November and December already belong to holidays, budget season, and year-end close. That leaves August, September, and October as the window where the work actually happens. This is the halftime audit for anyone responsible for a team, a customer experience, or a budget. Special shout out to all the campuses opening this week in higher education - thanks for welcoming the student back and creating a place where they can feel like they belong. Let's talk about the halftime audit - customers, teams, strategy, and you. This is how you will crush the rest of the year. In this episode: • Why role clarity rather than motivation is the quiet drag on your team's performance right now • Prioritize quality recognition and coaching around your most important priorities • Focus on what matters most going into year end - you can't tackle everything, so focus on key priorities with impact • Decide what you'll focus on, what needs to be removed from your list, and what gets pushed to 2027   Perfect for: hospitality leaders, business owners, CEOS, COOs, CX/EX professionals, operational managers, retail and service teams, training and development leaders, and anyone responsible for people and performance (and sales growth). Book time with me to learn about our speaking, training, and consulting services: https://calendly.com/thetonyjohnson/strategy  Links & Resources: 📌 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-johnson-ccxp/ 📌 Order my book Together We Serve: https://amzn.to/4pwGvPL  📌 Book hospitality training for your team today: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/summits 📌 Order my book Proof Positive: https://amzn.to/3LWtP5l  📌 Get your restaurant healthcheck as mentioned in the show at https://www.4xi360.com/diagnostix    Tony Johnson is a Customer Experience + Hospitality Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author with a wide background including higher education, restaurants, retail, travel, city government, chambers of commerse, and leisure.  He regularly speaks and coaches organizations to IGNITE THEIR SERVICE using his common sense approach to Customer engagement and retentions.  Tony has spoken to government agencies, airlines, universities, and many Fortune 500 companies to unlock their amazing capacity for excellence.   Check out my FREE Resources and Training Tools: Web: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTonyJohnson Twitter:  https://twitter.com/The_TonyJohnson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/THE_TONYJOHNSON/ Tik Tok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@igniteyourservice

Saying "Great Work" Isn't Recognition "Great work." Two words, zero impact. Your team can tell the difference between recognition and reflex, and so can your turnover numbers. In this episode I sit down with Alex Grande, founder of Recognize, to talk about what actually moves the needle on employee experience. Alex brings a rare combination to this conversation - he's an entrepreneur building HR technology, but he came up through psychology with published research in unconscious bias and social cognition. So this isn't a pep talk about praise. It's a working conversation about how recognition gets designed, why peer-to-peer is the purest form of it, and what happens to a team when the winners start noticing each other without a manager in the room. Practitioner to practitioner. Real tools you can use Monday. In this episode: Why training managers on 1:1s, feedback, and recognition is the highest-leverage employee experience investment you can make Comfort as a prerequisite for engagement - people don't bring their best to a room they're guarded in Why peer-to-peer recognition is the purest and most impactful form there is Winners want to work with winners: how recognition snowballs into a performance culture The specificity rule. Why "great work" fails and what to say instead Gamifying recognition without gimmicks: if the points don't lead somewhere, they don't lead anywhere Think SAPS: status, access, power, and stuff. This motivates people intrinsically The remote team killer nobody names: decision velocity, and why empowerment fixes it Building organic connection at a distance with water cooler channels and open meeting chat Meeting fatigue is real — kill the whole-team status update and make standups goals-based Camera on or camera off?  Alex Grande is an entrepreneur and workplace innovation expert who combines gamification with HR technology to help organizations build stronger, more connected cultures. As founder of Recognize, a social employee engagement platform, he helps companies improve communication, recognition, and retention. With a degree in psychology and published research in unconscious bias and social cognition, Alex brings an evidence-based, human-centered approach to creating recognition programs that drive lasting cultural change.   📌 Connect with Alex: https://recognizeapp.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexgrande/    Perfect for: hospitality leaders, business owners, CEOS, COOs, CX/EX professionals, operational managers, retail and service teams, training and development leaders, and anyone responsible for people and performance (and sales growth). Book time with me to learn about our speaking, training, and consulting services: https://calendly.com/thetonyjohnson/strategy  Links & Resources: 📌 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-johnson-ccxp/ 📌 Order my book Together We Serve: https://amzn.to/4pwGvPL  📌 Book hospitality training for your team today: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/summits 📌 Order my book Proof Positive: https://amzn.to/3LWtP5l  📌 Get your restaurant healthcheck as mentioned in the show at https://www.4xi360.com/diagnostix    Tony Johnson is a Customer Experience + Hospitality Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author with a wide background including higher education, restaurants, retail, travel, city government, chambers of commerse, and leisure.  He regularly speaks and coaches organizations to IGNITE THEIR SERVICE using his common sense approach to Customer engagement and retentions.  Tony has spoken to government agencies, airlines, universities, and many Fortune 500 companies to unlock their amazing capacity for excellence.   Check out my FREE Resources and Training Tools: Web: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTonyJohnson Twitter:  https://twitter.com/The_TonyJohnson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/THE_TONYJOHNSON/ Tik Tok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@igniteyourservice

Titans of Hospitality: What 250 Years of American Service Can Teach Us About What's Next America is about to turn 250, and the story of who we are as a country cannot be told without the story of how we serve. From the frontier to the drive through to the Apple Store, hospitality is one of the most American art forms we have. It is also one of the most misunderstood. On this Independence Day, let's celebrate the titans who created american hospitality. In this episode, I walk through the leaders who built the way we welcome, feed, host, and wow.  We have evolved from commodity to product to service to experience. Up next is transformation and impact. We start with Fred Harvey, the English immigrant who civilized the American West one white tablecloth at a time and put the first professional service workforce on the map.  We meet the woman behind the scenes, Mary Colter, whose Grand Canyon architecture proved that the room itself is part of the hospitality. Then we hit the road with Howard Johnson, whose orange roof became a national promise and go global with Conrad Hilton, who believed hotels could be consistent, clean, and outstanding at the same time. We spend time with Walt Disney, who engineered the immersrive experience and Truett Cathy, who anchored the whole thing in values + people. We look at Steve Jobs, the outsider who leaned into hospitality in his stores, and the man who built the third place, Howard Schultz.  We finish with Ray Kroc and his gift for standardization and scale.  This is a walk through our first 250 years of service, told from the perspective of how it impacted the customer. Perfect for: hospitality leaders, business owners, CEOS, COOs, CX/EX professionals, operational managers, retail and service teams, training and development leaders, and anyone responsible for people and performance (and sales growth).   Book time with me to learn about our speaking, training, and consulting services: https://calendly.com/thetonyjohnson/strategy  Links & Resources: 📌 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-johnson-ccxp/ 📌 Order my book Together We Serve: https://amzn.to/4pwGvPL  📌 Book hospitality training for your team today: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/summits 📌 Order my book Proof Positive: https://amzn.to/3LWtP5l  📌 Get your restaurant healthcheck as mentioned in the show at https://www.4xi360.com/diagnostix    Tony Johnson is a Customer Experience + Hospitality Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author with a wide background including higher education, restaurants, retail, travel, city government, chambers of commerse, and leisure.  He regularly speaks and coaches organizations to IGNITE THEIR SERVICE using his common sense approach to Customer engagement and retentions.  Tony has spoken to government agencies, airlines, universities, and many Fortune 500 companies to unlock their amazing capacity for excellence.   Check out my FREE Resources and Training Tools: Web: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTonyJohnson Twitter:  https://twitter.com/The_TonyJohnson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/THE_TONYJOHNSON/ Tik Tok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@igniteyourservice Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tonyjohnsoncx/

The Value Paradox: Why Guests Are Spending More and Forgiving Less Consumer sentiment is at an all-time low, yet people are still spending. The World Cup just kicked off on American soil. And right here in Polk County, Florida, a landmark healthcare partnership just opened its doors with a vision that every hospitality leader should study. In this episode, I unpacks the paradox reshaping restaurants, hotels, and every guest-facing business right now: guests are opening their wallets and they are less forgiving than ever when the experience falls short. The brands winning aren't the cheapest or the fanciest - they're the ones whose people make guests feel like the money was worth it. We talk about lessons from the Watson Clinic and Orlando Health ribbon cutting in Lakeland - a masterclass in designing for the future. We also talk about the FIFA World Cup as the ultimate high-stakes CX case study, with a practical playbook for host cities, hotels, restaurants, and stadium concessions operators facing surge volume, international guests, and a global spotlight. In this episode: Why value has less to do with price than you think - and the three layers that actually drive loyalty The K-shaped consumer market and what it means for your frontline team The World Cup CX playbook: cultural fluency, surge staffing, recovery, and finishing strong Three leadership moves to make this week -not next quarter Perfect for: hospitality leaders, business owners, CEOS, COOs, CX/EX professionals, operational managers, retail and service teams, training and development leaders, and anyone responsible for people and performance (and sales growth).   Book time with me to learn about our speaking, training, and consulting services: https://calendly.com/thetonyjohnson/strategy  Links & Resources: 📌 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-johnson-ccxp/ 📌 Order my book Together We Serve: https://amzn.to/4pwGvPL  📌 Book hospitality training for your team today: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/summits 📌 Order my book Proof Positive: https://amzn.to/3LWtP5l    Tony Johnson is a Customer Experience + Hospitality Consultant, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, and Author with a wide background including higher education, restaurants, retail, travel, city government, chambers of commerse, and leisure.  He regularly speaks and coaches organizations to IGNITE THEIR SERVICE using his common sense approach to Customer engagement and retentions.  Tony has spoken to government agencies, airlines, universities, and many Fortune 500 companies to unlock their amazing capacity for excellence.   Check out my FREE Resources and Training Tools: Web: https://www.igniteyourservice.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheTonyJohnson Twitter:  https://twitter.com/The_TonyJohnson Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/THE_TONYJOHNSON/ Tik Tok:   https://www.tiktok.com/@igniteyourservice Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/tonyjohnsoncx/