The Customer Experience – Who’d of thought?

Over the last 10 years I have learned and continue to learn a lot from the hotel business. Even though I work in golf I have managed to find a unique interest in learning how the luxury hotel market works but even better how they appeal to the customer and why? The even bigger question is can you take what you learn from this business and apply it to all others and be successful? I think you can!

The way I look at this is quite simple really I think you have 3 ways in how you view things as a consumer. You either have the experience you can’t forget, one you don’t remember, or one you want to forget.

The one you want to forget.
I think we have all had these. You go to a place and they don’t have something they said they did. The people don’t care if your being helped or not. You spend half your day looking for someone to help you. You have a bad experience with an employee normally because they don’t care. I could go on and on. These are the types of interactions that we would like to forget but do we really? No we don’t forget but we do say “I will never be going there again”. Then we may tell our friends don’t go there! Then they may tell their friend and the snowball effect happens. In a small town this could be all it takes. All from one bad experience.

The one you don’t remember.
I think this is the normal experience. We go somewhere to pick something up they have it we check out and that’s it. Maybe you make a phone call “Sir do you have xyz soap?” …”Yep” … Ok I will be there to pick it up. If someone asks where did you get that soap you may or may not remember where you got it because there was nothing that made it memorable.

The one you can’t forget.
This is what I call the customer experience. See we tend to remember when companies go out of their way and show they genuinely care and we reward them with free marketing and repeat business. We tend to remember brands, people, etc when something above and beyond happens. My wife went to Chic Fil a to get lunch for us one day and left her debit card at home. She didn’t realize it until she was at the window to pay and the employee not “the manager” the employee said don’t worry ma’am your lunch is on us today. Now you tell me do you think they will get their money back in sales for that one lunch they gave away? I can tell you they have plus some. It’s because they realize that the customer experience is what leads to profit not just the product.

In a world where you have nothing but choices there is always somewhere else you can spend your money. In today’s world if you want to be leading and not trying to figure out what’s working and what’s not concentrate on the customer and all else will fall in line. Don’t make promises you can’t keep and when given an opportunity to make a huge difference in a customers “life” ,yes that is the correct word, they will remember it forever and that is where you gain brand loyalty, free marketing, and a successful business.