CAESARS EMEA Company values come from the top.
your entertainment spend and so every month we get £500 from you. Your annual value to us is £6000, and if you do that for ten years, your lifetime value is £60,000 and we have made more than ten times what your value to us could have been, simply by keeping you happy, looking after you well, and you also tell everybody how good we are. The economics are very much aligned with responsible gaming as well. In my view, not only is it the right thing to do, there is absolutely no reason not to do it!
L-R: Sarah Robinson, Head of Group Marketing; Tony Boyd, Director of VIP Marketing; Sarah Sculpher, Chief Marketing Officer; Ann Sullivan, Chief Financial Officer
CI: There are facets of gaming where companies and staff are not accepting their responsibilities in this way… What do Caesars staff do that is so different? How do you get your staff to invest in this and to be consistent, to remain aware? MR: The key thing with getting the right behaviour
from our employees is to train them. We say look, this is what problem gambling looks like, this is the effect it has on people and these are the behaviours you might see from someone that potentially has problem gambling issues. It’s difficult if someone doesn’t exhibit any obvious signs of distress but there are other behaviours we train for – he seems very calm but he has bought in four times now, maybe it’s time for a subtle chat; we train employees to look for physical manifestations of behaviour, for signs of distress, things people might say, and buy-in type behaviours. Generally speaking people with problem gambling issues with display some or all of those behaviours. So we train, train, train, train, train – and of course we train the supervisors as well, and then we train the casino managers and the venue directors. Everybody who is licensed, and is an employee that interacts with customers, will have been through and understood that training. We underpin it with the mission values of our company – number one those six values is integrity. We say we will run our business right, be compliant and be ethical. We also have a code of commitment, which is to employees, communities and customers, and that talks about social responsibility, so this is what we are and what we are about. So there is no positive benefit whatsoever for an employee to ignore a customer who is potentially having issues; quite the reverse, because it would be inconsistent with the values and training we are discussing.
CI: Repeat custom comes from great service – look at London, nearly 30 casinos in three square miles, so what separates them? Customer service. MR: What you have described there underpins our
business model entirely. We teach our employees the service-profit chain, which is where if you have happy
32 AUGUST 2017
employees, you have happy customers, and happy shareholders. Hire the best people, motivate and engage them, make them proud to work there and train them well; they give great customer service which we measure, then customers come back again and again instead of going to the competition. It does work – and it’s a simple and nice way to do business.
CI: Caesars also supports the Young Gamblers’ Education Trust, aka YGAM – how does that work? Is it a budget proportion? MR: YGAM and Gordon Moody are two of the
responsible gambling charities we support; we set money aside in budgets, we do fundraising activities in our properties to support them (which also helps with the philosophy that it’s something important to our business)… The reason we have focussed on those two is that we have seen the work they both do directly. Gordon Moody deals with problem gamblers after they have become so, while YGAM is taking a high-risk group (younger people) and educating them before they become problem gamblers, and giving them an idea of what problem gambling looks like and how it can impact your life. I can’t think of anyone better qualified than Lee Willows to be running a business like that because he’s been a problem gambler himself, so he speaks with authenticity and candour, and he is very open about it. He is a great leader of that organisation, he does a great job and brings sincerity to it. We have supported them with financial resources which enables them to recruit people to provide more education; we will continue to do it, it’s a great organisation. Gordon Moody give residential face-to-face care, education, treatment and more – I have been to the house and witnessed their work, seen how appreciated and successful it is; the commitment from Elaine and the team is amazing, we help fund an additional residential teaching room and provide funding to support ongoing operating costs. We need to do these things for that small proportion of people that become problem gamblers because they need help.
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