Director, Service Excellence

Position Summary

Silversea is the preeminent cruise line for discerning guests, operating 12 ships and employ over 10,000 team members. Silversea’s small luxury ships are designed for those who delight in discovery and indulge in luxury.

All our ships feature spacious, ocean-view suites with butler service, and most include private verandas; Our ships sail pole-to-pole to over 900 destinations on all seven continents, leaving (almost) no part of coastline uncovered.

The brand has won dozen of awards for best cruise line and are looking to both maintain and improve the pre, onboard and post-cruise experience to set the standard in global hospitality.

The Director of Service Excellence is responsible for developing a culture of service excellence, leading the program, developing and delivering training program, communication, KPI forecasting, analytics and driving superior performance across customer touchpoints, pre cruise, onboard our ships, and post cruise driving continuous operational excellence in each area.

The Silversea Way is a brand-wide initiative committed to delivering world class service to our guests and internal customers (including employees, vendors and consultants).

Our mission is to surprise and delight our guests, make every day remarkable and continually improve. Our goal is to provide a personalized, consistent and genuine experience, to every customer, every time.

Delivering world class customer service will help differentiate Silversea in elevating our luxury service and hospitality standards through providing the Silversea Way experience to every guest every time and subsequently make price irrelevant.

The Director, Service Excellence will collaborate with consultants and leadership across the organization, ship and shore, to influence cultural change, to develop, present and implement initiatives, service standards and rewards & recognition programs.

The Director will lead Silversea Way efforts and initiatives shipboard and shore-side with a goal to improve guest experience and ultimately drive positive growth in Employees and Guest NPS scores.

The Director will collaborate with internal and external partners (i.e. Forbes Travel Guide, Micheline, AAA 5 Diamond etc.

to ensure all guest experiences are aligned with the Silversea Way philosophy and ahead of the competition within the Luxury Hospitality industry.

The Director of Service Excellence will oversee the design, development and implementation of curriculum content, training material, training modules and training software for all areas of Silversea Way with the ultimate role of to reaching NPS targets shipboard and across customer touchpoints pre and post cruise.

The Director of Service Excellence oversees shipboard guest & crew communication and collaborates with Guest Relations, HR & Hotel and Marine Ops Leadership as well as all areas outside operations include Sales and Marketing, to execute flawlessly.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities :

• Responsible for developing Silversea’s standards, refining them, and ensuring that they are executed.
• Helps prepare and monitors execution of the strategy for the entire Service Excellence organization shipboard and shoreside.
• Analyzes performance across the guest journey including : pre cruise black car service, hotels, flights, Food and Beverage, Guest Services, Entertainment, Onboard Revenue (i.

e., Spa, Casino, Shore Excursions), Housekeeping, Butlers, and Call centers and proposes solutions along with actionable items.

• Leads the Forbes Service Strategy and 5 stars Forbes execution program, delivery for shipboard teams with the ultimate goal of delivering Forbes 5-Star ratings for the first time in the cruise industry.
• Manages and creates onboard guest and mobilization communication fleetwide.
• Acts as financial controller for the service excellence budget.
• Collaborates with internal and external partners to drive and ensures continuous improvement and key performance metrics are met.
• Provides leadership to ensure NPS targets are achieved in each area.
• Develops and executes delivery strategies for training through the most efficient and effective vehicles (e.g. on-the-job development, internal training, external vendors, e-learning, seminars, experiential learning).
• Works with cross functional departments and external partners to implement new training products and programs to help produce expected results in different areas and supports New Builds, Modernizations.
• Follows up periodically with different owners of Knowledge Desk information in Silversea Hotel Operations to assure the info is accurate.
• Executes and drives the implementation of new Silversea Way initiatives.
• Manages new-to-cruise guest and first-to-brand guest identifier and is responsible for the service improvement program for this guest segment.
• Continues innovation in guest experience (Forbes, luxury standards etc.).
• Helps develop, implement and drive marketing strategies aligned with the Silversea Way vision . (e.g. Spotlight emails, Crew knowledge channels, Silversea Way branding visuals, Crew’s New’s, videos-etc.).
• Sets up monthly calls to follow up on the Silversea Way program deliverables and inspires continuous improvement.
• Acts on the Silversea Way ambassador’s feedback and drives improvement in the crew experience together with HR partners.
• Works with HR owners to ensure the rewards and recognition programs are adhered to and are aligned with the business needs to drive the right behavior.
• Measures the effectiveness of training programs through specific metrics tied to each initiative and provides timely reports.
• Manages and provides leadership to the Silversea Way Ambassador program shoreside.
• Creates forecasts and is responsible for a $7M + Service Excellence Budget

Qualifications, Knowledge and Skills :

• Bachelor’s degree (B.A.) in hospitality, business management or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of hospitality experience and / or training required; or equivalent combination of education and direct industry experience.
• Ability and willingness to travel up to 30% of the time.
• Previous cruise line experience preferred, but not required.
• Accepts accountability, welcomes feedback and manages individual and project team execution to deliver positive results.
• Strong people skills, positive, effectively builds relationships and encourages collaboration.
• Embraces change and positively influences others to welcome change.
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills, grammar, proofing, and editing skills; and strong ability to convert technical information into easy-to-understand documents (e.

g., Word, Excel, MS PowerPoint, Prezi, Keynote).

• Able to present effectively to small (30) and large audiences (700+).
• Website and online tutorial design and development skills preferred.
• Possesses strong analytical skills.
• Able to provide reporting and interpretation of complex sales, marketing and operations data along with actionable items.
• Must be a highly motivated, self-starter who will initiate, drive programs and analyze results.
• Must be able to forecast G&A for call centers and drive adherence to the budget.
• Must be able to find creative solutions to continue cost containment and savings without sacrificing the guest’s onboard experience.
30+ days ago