Trending
When I wrote The New Gold Standard, the cutting-edge technology was a handheld device that let a bellman look up your name.
That gadget is long dead. The standard it served is very much alive.
I think about that as leaders race to bolt AI onto service. Under the excitement sits a quiet fear: does our old service wisdom still apply — or does AI rewrite the rules?
My answer, with forty years of fieldwork behind it: the tools change every 18 months; the principles haven’t changed in a century. AI doesn’t repeal them — it raises the stakes. I call it the durable core. Three Ritz-Carlton standards that outlasted every device:
- The Credo: designed around whom? It points the enterprise at the genuine care of the guest. Most AI is quietly designed around the company — deflect contacts, cut handle time. A tool built around the Credo absorbs friction so a human can deliver care. Same tech, opposite aim.
- The Motto: dignity AI can’t manufacture. “Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.” A customer re-entering an account number for the third time isn’t being treated as one — and a monitored, scripted worker isn’t either. Equip your people; don’t surveil them.
- The Line-Up: how culture survives at scale. Every day, in every property, a brief huddle to reconnect to values and share a real story of legendary service. As automation absorbs the transactional layer, human moments get rarer — and rarer moments are harder to keep excellent. So the more you automate, the more you need the huddle. Most companies do this backward.
None of this is anti-technology. When the standard leads and the tool follows, AI is a gift:
- Let AI remember, so your people can be present.
- Let AI absorb friction, so your people deliver comfort.
- Let AI listen at scale, so your people respond with judgment.
The standard sets the aim. The technology serves it. Reverse that order, and you get efficient service nobody loves.
Stop asking how we modernize service with AI? Start asking what the durable core AI must protect and amplify?
What’s one service principle in your world you’d never let a tool replace?