Consumer Experience - The Good to Phenomenal Impact

“To cre­ate some­thing excep­tion­al, your mind­set must be relent­less­ly focused on the small­est detail.” — Gior­gio Armani, Ital­ian fash­ion designer

Recent­ly I stayed at one of my favourite hotels — the Kaha­la Hotel and Resort just out­side down­town Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii. The prop­er­ty is beau­ti­ful, the ser­vice is excel­lent, and the staff friend­ly — all impres­sive, but the best part is what hap­pens when the ser­vice does­n’t go right.

When I checked in, some­thing wasn’t work­ing prop­er­ly in my room, so as I left in the morn­ing, I let the front desk know, and went on with my day. And com­plete­ly for­got about it.

When I returned, I found this card in my room. Not only was it a nice ges­ture that they had con­firmed the prob­lem was fixed, they also showed the time it was fixed. I had left the hotel at 5 min­utes to 7, and it was fixed at 7:10. On top of that, they left me a lit­tle gift, which made me smile…a choco­late wrench.

When you look at it from a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence – they take an issue, and turn it into a delight­ful experience.

So there are many ways to cre­ate ser­vice experiences:

• Good — Do what the cus­tomer wants and fix it
• Appre­ci­at­ed — Do what the cus­tomer wants, fix it and con­firm it was done
• Phe­nom­e­nal — Do what the cus­tomer wants, con­firm it, and use it to cre­ate an addi­tion­al impact.

In this case, they made me smile.

Now flip this around, and look at it from the employee’s view: I’ll prob­a­bly nev­er see or meet the tech­ni­cian who fixed my prob­lem, but that per­son is going to feel very good about their work.

They know I’ll smile when I see the note and the choco­late wrench — and will want to do even more.

It’s a won­der­ful cir­cle. It’s unique and spe­cial – and the evi­dence is this blog: a spe­cial sto­ry I want to tell, in a world where some­times just get­ting some­thing done is an accomplishment!

I stay in hotels a lot and, sur­pris­ing­ly, these excep­tion­al expe­ri­ences are rare. You get basic and some­times appre­ci­at­ed, but not this phe­nom­e­nal oppor­tu­ni­ty to win a cus­tomer over.

Now, if some­one asks me where to stay in Hon­olu­lu, my only rec­om­men­da­tion is the Kaha­la – and they’ve pro­vid­ed me with a com­pelling sto­ry to tell about them.

The oth­er good hotels I have stayed at in Hawaii have fad­ed into the back of my mind…