Michael DaRe - June Let's Keep The Conversation Going

Let's Keep the Conversation Going – June 2022  
It is good to be home! I’ve spent the last 40 days on the road travelling to North Carolina and back. I spent no less than 14 nights in hotels and ate in at least thirty different restaurants along the way. Did I say it was good to be home?
I received various levels of service from well-known retailers, restaurants, and hotels along my travels.  Here is a brief narrative of three stand-out examples of service that we received that come to mind that I think are worthy of sharing from a customer’s point-of-view:

1.  A food service manager at one Holiday Inn Express introduced himself to each table, he asked how we were enjoying the (free) breakfast and if we had suggestions of how they could be better! That’s the customer experience and service we all hope for!
   
2. Restaurants were on par with expectations. Fast Food was always easy to find, but often not customer friendly. We stopped at one KFC just outside of KC, Mo. and were told that all they had left to sell were fries and biscuits. They still had another hour before they were scheduled to close!
   
3. We stayed in one well known hotel that was proud of their recent remodel. The rooms were  clean and new … but there were NO towel hooks or towel bars in our bathroom. For a multi-night stay, where do you place your wet towel for reuse? I checked with the housekeeping staff on our floor, and we looked in another room and another, and found that there were no towel hooks or towel bars in any of the rooms on my floor! They had not noticed this before and seemed genuinely surprised. I reported this to the front desk, and attendant there was shocked by this oversight. 
   

As they say, you cannot make this stuff up!! So why am I telling you all this? When is the last time you experienced or looked at your business like your customers do? Have you had your key employees visit your rooms, your order counters and drive-throughs and if they did, did you challenge them to do it through-the-eyes of your customer? What impressions (good or bad) have been made about your business, by your customers?
As we begin our summer business season, this is the time to take-a-look at your total business through the eyes of your customers.  I recommend that you spend the time to revisit each customer touch point within your business and even walk across the parking lot or street – see what impressions that your customers are getting from that vantage point.   This is a great topic for your next staff meeting or 1:1 meetings.  Everyone has a travel experience, what can be shared and learned from those experiences?  With travel dollars tight this year again, we cannot afford to overlook an opportunity or lose a customer.  Expect customers to expect more as they are paying more!!
Let’s keep the conversations going.  Call me if I can Help.

Michael
Michael@michaeldare.net    
(209) 607-8032