@BarefootBliss wrote:
Steve, what are you using for note taking while you are on the property, entering bits in your phone? (or maybe you just keep the notes in your head?)
Hahaha...I have a terrible memory. No way I can keep an employee name in my head for more than 5 minutes!
I've written about this before but I use an app called Notemaster on my phone, which in turn publishes to Google docs. I also have a voice recorder that I use to take quick notes here and there...and of course, pics whenever I need to remember something visually.
Oh, and my guest when I can! My current hotel travel partner has a photographic memory. I can always just ask her if I miss something. She literally gave me a list of ALL staff names after we recently checked out of a 2 night stay. It's freakish...but she's terrible at narratives, so we all have our strong points.
Here's the basic breakdown of my current workflow:
-Notmaster has subcategories, so I make one for each section of the report and put timings and quotes there. I have a shorthand that allows me to do this pretty quickly (TYSM = "Thank you so much"
-When I set and receive wake up calls, or order room service, or interact with housekeeping, I immediately dictate the event into my recorder
-I take pics of any defects, all food served, and obviously the required photos.
Once I arrive home:
-I set aside an entire day for the report.
-I make a folder for the evaluation and put my word doc and instructions there.
-Photos are named and sorted into folders for the submission requirements, data photos (Food, full trash cans, etc.), and personal photos.
-The required submission photos are batch resized and put into another folder.
-All receipts are scanned and put into yet another folder.
-All audio is dropped into a final folder.
-While I'm doing photos, my guest usually opens up the evaluation from my iPad and enters all staff names and/or descriptions.
-For each section of the report, I either speak the narrative while reading from Google docs, or play the narration from my voice recorder into the speech-to-text converter.
-I then do an editing pass in Word to clean up punctuation, formatting and spelling errors from the speech-to-text process.
-I score each section and add comments online after editing it, with the form on a neighboring screen to Word.
-I add my subjective commentary last after proofing and scoring the objective parts, when I then have a good memory for how the interaction felt.
If I'm on point, I can do a 2-night stay with 4 or 5 restaurant visits, a few bars and a spa and about 6-7 hours. I take a gym and lunch break in the middle to break up the monotony.