Summary

In this episode, Nick and Dan catch-up with Marco Herrera, Chief Executive Officer of DRGT. Learn how DRGT has leveraged decades of in-the-trenches systems and operational experience to produce a tech portfolio that’s garnered a considerable share of the international CMS market. Also, hear about how international operators are applying DRGT’s unique bonusing and cashless applications in ways that are of increasing interest to operators elsewhere. Also in this episode, leveraging the “personal touch” in the land-based / online divide.

Transcript

Nick Hogan:

Good morning, Dan. How are things in Vegas this morning?

Dan Cherry:

Wonderful. Good morning, Nick. Springtime in Vegas. Can’t beat it.

Nick Hogan:

Yeah. We actually have some lovely weather here today. I’m getting the shakes. I’m so shocked. Well, Dan, I’m fresh out of the Casino Operations Summit, which was held in Thessaloniki, Greece last week, a great conference, record setting attendance, and some seriously interesting talks. As we discussed last episode with Lucien, the central themes were navigating and balancing the online and land-based channels, which is a very big topic here in Europe. AI received a fair bit of attention and I was extremely happy to see a lot of player-oriented topics. So understanding them, engineering their experiences, and critically quite a lot of talk about communicating transparently with players. So those are great.

In terms of the talks that really resonated with me, there were a couple. First, as a data guy, I have to give a shout-out to Josh Hutchison at H2 Gaming Capital. I shared a couple of his write-ups with you, Dan. He did a phenomenal job presenting trends and projections in the land-based and online sectors. And so for the listeners, if you don’t know Josh and H2, look them up because they’re doing some great work there. I also liked one, it was by Riaan Van Rooyen, whose company, the Aria Group, is doing quite a bit of consulting work in Cambodia. And the thrust of his talk was that as an industry, we’re outlaying billions on projects without batting an eye, yet even the smallest investments and better understanding and catering to player needs get second shrift at best. So he emphasized that players of consequence really need to be noticed, felt, and remembered. He repeated those verbs frequently, and that investments and practices really need to be better aligned with that imperative. So I really enjoyed his message there. It was quite interesting.

And interestingly enough, that tees up this month’s listener question here that we dug out. Before I hit it, let me say that we love to tackle any questions that anybody listening may have. If you have a question about what we’re presenting or something you’d like us to present, please drop us an email at reelcast@realmetrics.com. Again, that’s our E-E-L-C-A-S-T@reelmetrics.com. Our policy is to keep all questions anonymous, so please don’t worry about us revealing your identity. That is not something we do.

Okay, Dan, so this comes from an operator in Germany who asks, “Hello, gentlemen. I followed your talk with Lucien Wijsman about how land-based operators stay relevant, but I missed one point. Our biggest advantage is the personal contact. We can smile at the players, shake their hands and show them that we really care for them. In the industry, we’ve spoken for years about omnichannel initiatives which are surely important, but should we not also invest more to make our guest interactions much more personalized? For me, the human factor is the most important thing.” Okay. So thanks to listener for that question. It’s a truly excellent one. And Dan, I have my own thoughts on this one, but I’m far more interested in your perspectives here.

Dan Cherry:

Absolutely. I think it’s a great question. At heart, I’m probably still an old school operator. So for me, I really think about the basics of the building blocks of delivering service and the blocking and tackling. I know the industry has changed over the years and certainly in North America, probably everywhere, it’s become a little less front of mind in terms of the different levers that people pull. And certainly with hiring challenges and things like that, service maybe isn’t what it was decades ago. But for me, I think about it starts with the culture. It starts with, it has to be something that leadership lives and breathes every day and is really embedded in how everybody throughout the organization thinks about. But technology is great, product is great. At the end of the day, especially in high frequency locals casinos, I think service is still the way that folks can differentiate. So keeping it simple, I was always focused on starting in the hiring process. It’s much easier to hire people that genuinely care, genuinely have a service bent to how they think about the world than train it. But training is still important.

So I always felt that organizations that have a really structured approach to what is their service philosophy really make a difference. And then inspecting what you expect. So I’m a big believer on whatever you call it, whether it’s snapshots or take fives, quick evaluations, ways to deliver feedback on the things that are important to us. So whether that’s greeting guests, whether that’s using their name, whether that’s smiling, whether that’s offering a parting pledgetry, whatever they are because things can be different at different properties. The key is that they’re genuine. But I’m a true believer that it has to be programmed, and it has to be part of what you do every day.

And maybe in a destination market like Vegas, service is probably a less important piece of the puzzle than it was before. But again, in the high frequency markets, it absolutely is. So for me, differentiation is still about basics of focusing on and living and breathing service every day. I think technology probably plays a huge part. And I think our guest may actually have some insights here on the tech front on how companies are enabling this to personalize and get information on the guests in the hands of team members. But hopefully the answer 10 years ago is still the answer today and it’ll still be the answer 10 years from now, which is care about the guests, walk the floor, live and breathe service and treat people well. But I want to know what you think.

Nick Hogan:

Well, for