―――Where does the name “Kokotel” come from?

Mr. Rei Matsuda : Kokotel comes from the word “Kokoro” in Japanese which means “Heart”. We aim to provide a warming experience through Thai style service combining with Japan’s high-standard service under the concept of “We Are Friends & Family Serving Friends & Family”.

K.Ekachai Panngam : Our CEO, Mr. Rei Matsuda, told me that he had been working very hard all the time and hardly had time for his family. Once he started doing hotel and lodging business, he realized that there must be many people out there going through the same thing as he does. The challenge is how to get all members in the family to be able to enjoy their time together in the same space. Kokotel is designed to meet customers’ expectations of all genders, ages, and purposes of their stay. 

―――What are your first impressions towards Teachme Biz

Mr. Rei Matsuda : I heard that so many people are using Teachme Biz in Japan. Among those include companies in the same business as us. So, I thought it must work really well. At the time, our company also reached a point where we needed to start using a new solution like this. When I told other people in the company about Teachme Biz, they all agreed it would be a great tool for managing our hotel branches which is also what I intended to use it for.

K.Ekachai Panngam : In my experience, almost all hotels’ manuals are in hard copies. We use such a large amount of papers each day for meetings. However, since we got to know Teachme Biz, which is an online platform, we are able to access the operations manuals from home, headquarter, or anywhere. There is no need to go to a specific place just to look at manuals anymore. Before we knew Teachme Biz, we were facing an issue of staff not following company’s standard. That caused the service standard of each branch to be different. Yet, now we are able to standardise operations throughout the company with Teachme Biz.

―――How are you using Teachme Biz? 

Mr. Rei Matsuda : We are currenting operating 10 hotel branches and will keep expanding. In the meantime, we have to recruit new staff and keep training them. For that reason, we need standard operations manuals to facilitate the training. At first, I planned to use Teachme Biz with the operations of Front Office, Kitchen, and Housekeeping, which have achieved my target. In addition to those, recently we are using it in the Back Office operations as well. Moreover, we also use it in the operations at our headquarter, though it was not in my original plan. Recently, we have issued many operations manuals including those of Sales or even Accounting and HR departments – who also use Teachme Biz as a communication approach with employees to instruct them on how to apply for allowance or how to apply for changing their shift etc.

K.Ekachai Panngam : We are now preparing to open a new branch in Thonglor area. One of our preparations is to train staff who are to be newly recruited and make sure they learn the operations in time for the Pre-opening which is coming soon. Teachme Biz allows staff to memorise the operations procedures with pictures or videos without wasting time to read through a huge amount of texts. That lets training flow much easier and faster.  For daily use, when staff cannot remember some procedures or face some work troubles, they can check the operations manuals right away. On top of that, they can look up what they need to prepare for the day or what they should improve via their mobile phones before coming to work as well.

Tough challenges in the Hotel Industry are maintaining service standard and training staff in different branches

Sample SOP 

―――What is your secret for maintaining Kokotel’s service standard?

K.Ekachai Panngam : Due to the obstacle of communication and travelling between branches, the difficulties and challenges for hotels with multiple branches are the ability to maintain the same level of service standard and training staff thoroughly. Since we have Teachme Biz, apart from initial training for newly-recruited staff, we also arrange tests for staff twice a year. I make the tests with Google Doc and send them online to all the branches. After they have done the tests, I check the results to see which branch or which province has the lowest score. Then I send the operations manuals via Teachme Biz to them for re-training. By regularly repeating these steps, we could manage to maintain our service and staff training standards. 

Utilizing Teachme Biz together with other platforms for wider range of usage. Setting a company standard does not end at creating manuals, but also covers the actual operation and continual improvement.

K.Ekachai Panngam : Although Teachme Biz is easy to use, access, and understand, at the beginning when I used the “View Report” function to check who has read the manuals, I found that there were some staff who did not check the manuals at all. I tried to find a way to urge them to use the manuals and came up with the “SOP of the Day” project. We combine Teachme Biz with Line Bot, another platform that we are using, to send URL of the manuals to our hotel staff every morning to encourage manual usage, in order to increase their knowledge, as well as adapting the knowledge to improve their performance consistently.

Kokotel’s new project with a support of Teachme Biz

K.Ekachai Panngam : We have a project called “Koko Love Eco”, a project to increase our staff and customers’ environmental awareness. We adjusted our service to be more eco-friendly by serving water in reusable glass bottles as an alternative to plastic bottles, so that guests can refill the glass bottles at water stations anytime in order to reduce the plastics consumption and for guests to make more use of what we have to offer for their convenient stay. We also replace the Room Directory paper with digital information. It becomes easier to update, reduces paper usage, and provides guests an easier access to hotel’s information by putting the room directory details in Teachme Biz. Guests can scan QR code in the hotel room to access the information. It is an improvement in service that is more environmentally friendly, more convenient for customers, and reduces hotel’s operations expense at the same time.

―――How is the staff’s response to Teachme Biz?

Mr. Rei Matsuda : They all shared the same response that it is very easy to use, just taking photos and videos and it is done. It is unlike other operations manuals creating tools. We can upload them right away. It is the opposite of the traditional way of making manuals that always gives us a headache and takes so much time. Especially for the Kitchen Department, Teachme Biz allows us to upload pictures and videos with just the tip of finger, letting our staff understand the recipes much easier than the paper recipes, thus allowing us to avoid the problem of staff cooking with their own recipes.

K.Ekachai Panngam : For example, before we started using Teachme Biz, when staff wanted a document, they had to contact the head office to ask where the document is, or to ask the head office to deliver the document. However, storing documents online makes it more organised. Thanks to Teachme Biz, now all staff can search for documents without having to waste their time making phone calls, letting them have more time to take care of customers. 

Future Usage

Mr. Rei Matsuda : In addition to using Teachme Biz within the organisation, I intend to use it as a communication tool between our company and the customers even further.

K.Ekachai Panngam : We have moved all the manuals to Teachme Biz, and have finished adding images (visual-based) to catch more attention. In the future, I would like to use Teachme Biz for the “Koko Love Eco” project to develop a high service standard for customers and be further friendly to the environment.