One of the important things to realise and understand is that if you want your business to be competitive in the FIVE STAR WORLD then you need to make sure that your business is playing by the rules of the Five Star World.
And that is, that if you want your business to be perceived as being a Five Star Business, then it must act like a Five Star Business in ALL ASPECTS of business.
It’s about maintaining credibility.
There’s no point calling yourself a Five Star Business if your business is behaving in ways that are less than Five Star that are letting THE BRAND of your business down.
Recently I spent a few days up in Sydney, which meant that I needed to find hotel accommodation for a few nights. And because I was really only looking for a place to sleep because I was out for all of the day, I decided to book at a hotel that I had never stayed at previously.
With this hotel, the per night freight was a considerable saving when compared to where I usually stay, and since I was only travelling solo this time, I thought I would avail myself of the financial saving…
What could possibly go wrong?
Interestingly, at this new hotel, the room that I booked was different in two significant ways.
Firstly, the room was smaller than I was used to. The room had a bed and it had a wall-mounted television. Beside the bed, on one side, was a small round table with two single modular chairs that swivelled on their bases. I deduced that this table and chair ensemble was meant to be used for television viewing, and for dining, and also as a desk.
I made these deductions because the room had no lounge for sitting on to watch TV, it had no separate dining area, and there was no desk and desk chair area in the room. The room had no coffee table, as such…
The second thing that really irked me about this hotel was that the room was supplied with very thin toilet paper.
Thin toilet paper is a real concern for me…
And that’s because when toilet paper anywhere is presented as being suitable for human consumption, to me that means this:
It should mean that no matter how many times the user folds the paper over before use, the paper should never be violated by penetration while being used.
There’s no worse feeling in the world than trying to clean up, and then realising that the skin of your fingers has reached a place that it should never reach.
And sadly, at this hotel, this paper wasn’t cutting the mustard.
And this was supposedly a five star hotel.
And to make matters worse, on subsequent visits to the smallest room during my stay, it didn’t matter how many times I folded, the paper just wasn’t up to the task.
And that’s not a good look for a five star hotel.
Now I know that in public bathrooms and in clubs and pubs, cutting costs and saving a few pennies on small items like this can be important to the bottom line for those businesses [excuse the pun], but for a five star hotel, in the smallest room is not the place where guests want to feel that penny pinching is going on…
At my dental practice…
I know that at my dental practice, we always used NAME BRAND tissues and paper products for our patients to use, because we wanted them to have the best, and we wanted them to feel that we were always offering them the best, at all times.
We never wanted our patients to feel that they were paying TOP DOLLAR for their dental treatment, while we were short-changing them by making them use facial tissues that were “No Frills Brand” that felt as though the tissues were made from sandpaper…
It was the same with our dental bibs. We only ever used bibs that were double the width of standard bibs and that were 8-ply thickness compared to the usual 4-ply bibs used by most other dental practices.
The 8-ply bibs were considerably more absorbent, and they felt stronger to the patient.
But more importantly, the patient felt that the 8-ply bibs would certainly be more protective to them than the thinner and weaker feeling 4-ply bibs.
When Qantas…
When Qantas started cutting back on luxury inclusions for their premium flyers, these flyers knew and recognised immediately that they were now getting something inferior served up to them compared to before, when they had previously received more.
And the flyers also knew that the fares they were now paying had not been reduced at all to represent the change in quality of the EXPERIENCE they were now being presented.
Customers Are People Too…
Your customers are not lemmings.
They have feelings, and perceptions.
And when your business changes things for the worse, or for less quality, your regular customers will be the first to notice these changes.
And when they notice these changes, they will protest, and they will leave you, and take their business elsewhere to another business, that does not short-change them and does not disrespect them.
And when they leave, in this day and age, they will tell others.
More than they have ever done before….
It’s the little things that matter.
It’s the little things that really make the big differences.
It’s the little things that people notice…
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Dr. David Moffet BDS FPFA CSP is a certified CX Experience coach. David works with his wife Jayne Bandy to help SME businesses improve their Customer Service Systems to create memorable World Class experiences for their valued clients and customers. Click here to find out how David and Jayne can help your business