February, 1995 (continued):
A week after speaking to a public radio group in Nashville, I flew to Tulsa for a couple of days, where I conducted both HOW TO CREATE MAXIMUM IMPACT RADIO ADVERTISING and AIR PERSONALITY PLUS+ for Carl Smith and the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters.
As you might know, I conduct Customer Service seminars for retailers as well as broadcasters. Here’s a minor incident that illustrates an important Customer Service point:
The seminars were held at the Doubletree Inn. For years the Doubletree chain had cultivated a unique “benchmark” image by making it a point to deliver a couple of freshly baked (still warm!) chocolate chip cookies to the guest’s room shortly after check-in. You might consider this true “value-added.”
Like any value-added item, the first time the guest experiences it, it is a delightful surprise. On subsequent visits, the guest expects it (and, presumably, still enjoys it).
But when I checked into this Doubletree, the desk clerk completed my registration and wordlessly handed me both a key and a box containing two cold chocolate chip cookies.
Did I think, “Oh, great! Cookies”?
No. I thought, “Hey, these are cold. And usually they bring them to my room. And the desk clerk’s determined lack of human touch has reduced this ritual from a warm, personal contact with the hotel to something he simply is required to give me.”
In my seminars, I refer to every contact a business has with a customer as a “profit point” — a chance to enhance or strengthen the relationship with the customer. By transforming freshly baked cookies into just another part of the system, however, the Doubletree brand lost the profit point…systemwide.
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I stayed at a Doubletree in White Plains, NY a few months ago, and was handed the warm cookies by the clerk, in the standard little paper thingie they've always used.
Let's hope your experience was an isolated one, and they haven't done that chainwide…that would truly be sad.
Craig: No, see, originally the clerk didn't hand you the cookies at all. A few minutes after you'd settled into your room, a hotel employee would appear at your door…with the warm cookies (and, I believe, a glass of milk).
Do you remember back when you'd go to a Baskin Robbins and if they had a flavor you didnt try the clerk behind the counter happily would pick up a spoon and let you try it?
Nowadays, you go and they just explain the flavor rather than give you a go at it. Basically you have to get in their hair bad enough for them to pick up the spoon so you cantry it. Companies are sacrificing their customer relations too much by cutting jobs, paying less and not giving the right quality control that such an important pocision that represents the face of the company. oh, and if you want awesome cookies? gett hem from toms moms cookies online!– simply the best
They wouldn't last long enough on the napkin for me to know if they had lost their luster or not.
This story makes me think of the "Woofie Factor" – ever hear of that?
We have a local coffee shop which sells gelato and they still let you taste it on the spoon. I support them all the way.
The sad thing is, this has happened to radio too. Sometimes we focus so much on things that are done behind the scenes, our "on-air" sound is what has suffered. You can hear it any time you tune in to nearly any station (except for mine, of course) that is supposed to be a market leader, and you get a "that was____, this is______ on Station X. Or, even worse, "This is Station X, The Best Music All Day, and Slappy Loud Jock in the morning!" No artists, no song titles, nothing. You know someone is working, but it's probably on something other than their show at the time of their show…Wow, this was way longer than I intended.
I noticed this trend a few years back, in of all places, Disneyland.
It had been a little over 15 years since I'd been to Disneyland. My last visit was in the the mid eighties around the time Star Tours opened. The Disney cast members still did a pretty good job of selling the experience.
Fast forward to around 2002…
The kid running the the canoe ride in Frontierland is ignoring the people in line while he talks (loudly) with another cast member about the chick he hooked up with at a club in Hollywood the night before. Talk about taking you out of the experience It was like that all over the park. And I still see it to this day.
The "Disney" experience used to be total immersion in the illusion you were "somewhere else." Once you walked under that train trestle, the real world was a million miles away and stay away until you left. That's one reason Disney built a berm around the Magic Kingdom. To keep the real world out of your sight line.
In our business, we see (hear?) the erosion of care in the way PDs/prod people/jocks interact with systems such as Prophet, Audio Vault, and Scott Studios. Loose cues, gaps, uneven levels, over-modulation. There just seems to be a lack of care. No desire to create an exciting sounding radio station. No desire to immerse the listener in the world of station K-XXX.
No desire to give the listener a warm cookie.
P.S.
I remember my PD in Seattle arguing with our Office Manager about which hotel to book for an upcoming convention…
OFFICE MANAGER: But the Hilton is across the street from the convention center and is $25 a night cheaper. The Doubletree is all the way out by the airport!
PD: But the Doubletree has cookies.