Audrey Hogan in the COO of TimeForge, a single dashboard service capable of mainstreaming and optimizing HR and Operations. Audrey is a Swiss army knife of talent that can teach you how to optimize labor management and boost your team. With an eye for and education in technical communication, Audrey is an expert on the crossroads of software and insights.

Here are a few highlights from this episode:

What is the most important aspect of the guest experience nowadays?

Culture.

“Your businesses culture is going to matter more than anything else you do, for that’s going to get your attention and boost employee morale.

. . . I think that guests are a lot more forgiving right now than they used to be. I think there’s still that segment of the guest population that’s going to be critical, and often justifiably. But I think that actually, as the younger generations are coming up with terms like Karen in the back of their head, as things they don’t want to be. I think that I think that we’re going to see the way that that pivots into guest experience through the cultures coming“

What are some ingredients to good industry culture?

“Good culture ingredients are gonna include positive intent, and that’s gonna derive from leadership. There’s a lot of argument around how a culture can be driven bottom up and if you’re not being intentional in your culture, and how you laid your foundation. But if you’re being intentional and setting a good culture, leadership is going to have positive intent, a clear vision, and a goal for the business that’s outside of just make money. It’s gonna have pretty transparent rules for itself. Leadership will around how it wants to engage with employees and with guests and with other members of the leadership team.”

What are some successful tactics you’ve seen or tried lately?

“I’m loving the level of partnership in the industry. I just spent a month of my life at trade shows just back to back going to industry conferences. I think we’re in such a pivotal time for retail as a whole, but especially restaurant food service bars, where the sky is the limit. It started with APIs and everyone starting to integrate together and vendors going ‘Hey, I don’t have to be everything to everyone. I can focus on my best solution and make sure that I am the very best at this one thing, and I can integrate with partners to be even greater’ and I think it took the rapid technology adoption over the last 3 years for vendors to really recognize the power that came with partnership.“

Who deserves an Ovation in the industry?

“I really love what I’m seeing at CBS with their North Star product. They are constantly pivoting to customer demand. They’re listening to the organizations that are using their products, and they’re building and adapting to everything that the industry needs. It’s so robust, and they are so easy to work with from an integration perspective.“