On Friday evening, Elaine and I went out to meet some of the staff at London Taphouse (the venue for the Refresh Summer Social). When we arrived, we were greeted by professional door staff and served relatively quickly (OK, it was somewhat empty at 5:30pm) by a cheerful bartender.
As we waited for our meeting to kick off, I started to think a bit about how running an establishment is not unlike running any other kind of business: there are budgets to work with, laws to be obeyed, expectations to be met (especially if you have investors), and so on and so forth. Another commonality that came to mind was that, at all times, we should be working hard to build amazing experiences.
There are many companies out there that put a great deal of effort and resources (personnel and financial) into building amazing experiences. One of my personal favorites that I’ve spoken of before are Freshbooks. Freshbooks has developed a customer appreciation culture they call the 4e’s, or “Execute on Extraordinary Experiences Everyday”. I could explain it to you, but I’ll let the experts do all the heavy lifting.
Building amazing experiences doesn’t require a great deal of expertise, or large budgets (although they do help). What it does require is an in-depth understanding of the business you are in and who your customer is, the kind of service you would want to receive if you were that customer, a working knowledge of the tools available to you, and a strategy for execution.
As our meeting progressed, we quickly realized that he wasn’t like most other business owners we’ve met. He was different. He was very interested in creating a unique environment centered around building great experiences for his patrons. He had started this process by creating a set of ground rules around how his staff should behave around and treat ALL customers coming into his business. Once these were in place, they were enforced with a great deal of success. Money and profits took a backseat to providing quality customer service.
He recounted an experience with a customer who had lamented that if he paid the $15 cover charge, he better have “an awesome time”. Rather than pitch him on all the reasons why he would be guaranteed to have an awesome time, he was asked flat out: “If all it took was $15 to ensure you have an awesome time, how can we make that happen for you?”
Building amazing experiences should not be an afterthought, it should be a part of how you conduct business on a daily business. It stems from a commitment to always be better, to continually improve your product or service and give yourself a competitive edge that people will remember you by.
What about you? How do you build amazing experiences for your customers? What tools/strategies do you employ to keep your customers happy and coming back for more?
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