Getting close to your customers, providing them with service that is personal, comfortable, memorable, and remarkable, that provides them with recognition and assurance, is an incredibly powerful way to do business. It will bring you more engaged customers, more brand loyalty, even help you build customer “brand ambassadors” who will eagerly serve as your marketing wing.
And–wait for it–you can charge more money. Sometimes a lot more.
I’m not making this up.
We get so scared in business about charging what we’re worth, for fear of losing out or appearing “overpriced,” whatever that means. But if commerce were all about low pricing, there would be no space for retailers like
Instead, for Nordstrom customers, great, highly personalized customer service from the time you enter the store through the time you need to make use of great return policy provide a personal benefit that make the equation—for them—work out in favor of paying more to get more.
The more you “think like Nordstrom,” in other words, the closer you get to providing a superior, personal, customer experience, the more you can minimize price as a consideration–at least for the customers who care about such things. And many customers do.
Your Customer Is The Star: An eBook From Forbes How to make Millennials, Boomers and everyone in between fall in love with your business. By Micah Solomon.
Last week I enjoyed some time with Kim Hoffman discussing this. She’s the director of marketing currently at Four Seasons Whistler, and was previously in the same position at Four Seasons Las Vegas on the Vegas Strip. In both of these towns, you can certainly find less expensive places to stay, without suffering much hardship at all. At the non-four-seasonses, you’ll find an equally convenient location, similarly shaped room, hot and cold running water, Internet that works.
Yet many customers choose, happily choose, to pay the premium commanded by the Four Seasons, even though sort-of-comparable alternatives are available nearby. At the Las Vegas Four Seasons, in particular, this distinction and the willingness that guests have to make it is especially stark: it is located in, i.e., makes up part of, exactly the same building as the less-expensive Mandalay Bay hotel. Which means that Floor 34 of the building (which is not branded as/managed by Four Seasons) on average is a good hundred dollars less than the identically-proportioned room on Floor 35, the four seasons-branded room whose floor makes up the Mandalay Bay-room’s ceiling.
Hoffman of Four Seasons, in fact, made this point to her employees repeatedly, from orientation onward, during her tenure at the Las Vegas property: That they, and the service they provide, are the true differentiators, the reason that a room on Floor 35, 36, 37 and so forth is literally valued more by a guest than help one on 34 or below. It’s not the slightly higher view of the strip. It’s not the rather nicer furnishings since the recent remodel. It’s the service.
Specifically, I would shine a light on two specific aspects of the service that allows Four Seasons to command a premium. Both of which you can integrate into your own business in almost any industry.
• Recognition. A very strong attempt made to personalize the experience so that you feel recognized as a particular person on property and upon your return to the property. The great restaurateur Danny Meyer has said that recognition is one of the main, perhaps the main thing that guests want from the hospitality experience, and I don’t think he’s wrong.
• A feeling that you, the customer, will be taken care of, whatever it takes. Whether things are more or less as you like them upon your arrival, or require adjustment, the staff is more than willing to get things to your liking. For example, for her very-frequent-travelers–businesspeople on assignment and such– Hoffman and fellow employees will prepare their paperwork pre-arrival and greet them at their cars with room keys already ready. Far from standard procedure, but personal service is the best service, and that’s what they’re intent on providing. And Four Seasons will do whatever it takes to take care of you, whether that “crisis” such as an internet outage or trouble with a dinner reservation or a true crisis, like the phenomenal story Jimmy Kimmel has told about spending a tsunami with Four Seasons.
Recognition and knowing you’re taken care of. Doesn’t sound like a lot. But it is a lot. For most any business, it can make a big difference in the profitability and sustainability that loyal, engaged, less-price-sensitive customers can provide.
Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, customer experience speaker and bestselling business author, most recently of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service
