The Marketing Value of Personal Recognition

I recently have been the lucky recipient of personal recognition as a valued customer. For many organizations personal recognition marketing gets regularly overlooked as one of the best and very cheap ways to spend marketing time and money.

Have you recently personally recognized a customer for their value? Without them you wouldn't be in business...

Example #1
I've written before on my transition to using a local bank (or credit union in my case) versus a big-impersonal-conglomerate-that-apparently-does-not-care-if-they-have-my-money-type-bank (aka Wells Fargo). Since switching to Wescom I have received now at least two (maybe three) personal letters from staff at the bank. I think it is important to note that it is not always from the branch manager but from the bank teller of my last visit. I have never banked at any other bank where the teller sends a "you are valued" letter.P.S. Despite what Chrystal says it is not because I'm Daddy-Big-Bucks. Not even close!

Example #2
When I switched from a PC to a Mac I found the need to have an MS Office compatible program with the hope to not pay through my nose for it. On the recommendation of a friend I downloaded NeoOffice and have been "reviewing it" for about 6 months. This week I came to the final conclusion that "it is awesome". I think it is awesome for two major reasons. First, all the functionality I need is there. Second, it's FREE! That's right, a FREE Office Software Suite that includes compatible versions of MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, and MS Access. It also has a very basic Visio type program. I only use Writer (Word) and Calc (Excel) but I have not yet had a single compatibility problem. NeoOffice asks for donations to support keeping the software free, so upon deciding how useful it was I made a donation. I immediately received the below automatic email.
But then I also received a personal email from Patrick thanking me for my donation.
Oh, and for the record my very large donation was $100, which seemed really cheap considering it saved me the $400 expense of buying Office for Mac.

Apathy = A Problem Technology Cannot Solve

Some of you know I have two blogs currently. I wrote a post for hospitality technology made simple that I thought was worth while for the readers of k.sturm blog as well. I won't do this often as duplicating blog content is a bit lame, but I thought this post was worth it.
_________________
I am a big believer that technology can solve many business and operational problems. There is POS for tracking product mix, streamlining order flow, and revenue reporting; Inventory Management for getting accurate food costs, purchasing cycles, and inventory control; Reservations for managing guest reservations, table turn, and wait times; and a slew of other systems depending on the venue. But for hospitality venues there is a problem that technology solutions cannot solve - mainly apathy or the trait of "learned helplessness."

Last night my family and some friends went out to dinner at El Paseo restaurant in Santa Barbara. We were doing an early dinner (we had two toddlers in tow) and were glad to see the restaurant was not too busy. We really like El Paseo because of the atmosphere (retractable roof) and good food (our opinion). We LOVE the table-side made guacamole and fresh made warm tortillas, and they usually have a pretty solid margarita. We go enough we know what is good and what is not, so we stick to what is good (like the fajitas). Also an important point is I go there because they are a former customer and I am a firm believer in supporting your customers.

But our experience last night ranks in my top 5 worst at any hospitality venue. I point the cause to apathy on the part of the manager and service staff. I will set the stage as it was immediately apparent El Paseo was understaffed for the night. We were all sensitive to this as my wife and friend both waited tables for years and I have spent hours on end helping restaurant staff work through system technology issues (I bused tables in a suit once at a customer site because that was where I could help ensure the guest's experience stayed positive). From the moment we walked in the door at El Paseo we were an annoyance versus a guest. I had to find someone to seat us, and once we were seated had to flag down the manager after 15 minutes. We asked the manager if he could bring us water and napkins (napkins came half way through the meal...recall we had two toddlers with us) and requested a waiter to come over. He declined to get us water and replied, "I will find someone to get your drink order." No apology for the wait or a comment that things might be a little slow.

When our waiter arrived (visibly annoyed we had him summoned) we ordered our drinks, our food (with a one special request), and asked for silverware and napkins. We got three deep sighs and at least four eye rolls. We had been given a kids menu and ordered two kids meals with a lemonade. When our drinks arrived the waiter set a foot-tall-cone-shaped-three-pound-bar-glass filled to top with lemonade in front of our friends 2 year old (no exaggeration!) We asked for kids cup to which he responded they have none (kids menu, kids meals, no kids cup?). We asked if they had a smaller cup, and he came back to the table with a plastic Budweiser cup and no lid (a Bud cup for a toddler?).

We arrived at the restaurant before 6:00 pm and received our food at about 7:00 pm. In that one hour we saw our server once to place our order and once to receive our drinks. We called the manager over twice to ask for more water and napkins, and never once got an apology or a comment on better service. I helped implement El Paseo's technology solutions so I know their systems cannot be to blame for what we experienced last night. I also know the ownership group and have eaten at their other restaurants in Santa Barbara, so I do not believe it is part of the ownership group. Our experience last night was 100% caused by apathetic management and wait staff. But our experience could have been 100% different with the same staff and same poor service. Here's how...

roll out the welcome mat
Greet your customer with a smile and welcome them to your venue. Even if the service is going to be below standard you should still make your customer want to be there.

when required set a low expectation
When as a manager or server you know you cannot deliver the best service, be up front with customers and set that expectation. Offer that you will check in as often as possible, but that service may be slower than normal. That way if it is slow the guest expected it, but if it is not you over achieved. Most customers will be accepting of this.

Image credit to Julianfoto

cater to your customer
If you offer a separate kids menu families will come to your restaurant. Parents expect kid cups to be available if you have a kids menu. Not having kids cups is saying you don't want kids in the restaurant.

apologize when you know you should
You know when you need to apologize for crummy service, even when it's not your fault. An apology can go a long long way. Everybody has bad days at the office. Apologizing when you flat out do not deliver means you care enough to want to deliver.

If only I could invent a technology solution that solved the apathetic employee problem...

Doing Well Just Isn't Enough

In college I was part of a group of guys that met regularly to keep each other accountable in our lives, our relationship, and our walk with God. One of our goals, or mottos if you will, was "To Be Good Men Speaking Well." I was reminded of that motto today when I read this speech given Anna Quindlen at an American University graduation ceremony. For a while I lost track of my priorities and mixed up what was really important in my life. The desire to do well surpassed the desire to do good. Looking around it is easy to see how doing well can take precedence over doing good. We put our faith and happiness in the next promotion, the bigger house, the nicer cloths, and the newer car.

But the promotion, house, cloths and car can't give back. They just lead to the newer car, bigger house, and next promotion. Today reflect on what you are known for. Are you known for doing well or doing good? I'm not against doing well. I want to do well, but when all is said and done doing good will create more happiness and a longer legacy for you and those you are good to.

Speech by Anna Quindlen:
"I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree: there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank accounts but also your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is cold comfort on a winter's night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've received your test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my work stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the centre of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I am a good friend to my friends and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cut out. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, at best mediocre at my job if those other things were not true.

You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are. So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger pay cheque, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast?

Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze at the seaside, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water, or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a sweet with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an email. Write a letter. Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beer and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister. All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, and our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of to live.

I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this: Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the back yard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived".

Losing Business with Business Automation

Automated customer service emails have their place. But when they are not in line with customer expectation you can end up doing more harm than good.
On Friday Jan, 17 I took a flight on US Airways from San Antonio to Phoenix. I experienced the worst service in my history of flying, which is saying something since I spent the equivalent of one full work month on a plane in 2007 (about 160 hours for those told there would be no math) . Never before had I written an airline as the bar is set pretty low with regard to guest experience and I am generally understanding of the airline plight. Airline employees deal with unhappy and rude customers all the time, and 98% of the time the problem is out of their control like flight delays or being out of Coke cans mid flight.

But attitude and how a job is performed is completely in the control of any employee. The kicker for me was getting off the plane to wait for my carry on bag to be delivered (small plane) and watch our bags get "launched" by an employee three feet up over a railing and fall about three feet to a landing. Thankfully I didn't have anything fragile in mine, but I saw one laptop bag go airborne (as it's owner cringed) and one garment bag get a hammer style throw.

Since my iPhone does not have video capability (one of its major limitations) I tried to get my camera out to take video but was too slow (I think it would have made an interesting YouTube upload). I sent a note to US Airways, but not an "angry customer" note. I told them the story of my experience and ended it saying I did not want anything in return but hoped customer service would be a higher priority.

The following day I got an automated response from US Airways apologizing for my "travel difficulties" and a $75 non-transferable travel voucher. I suppose I could have just accepted this as the reality of things, but I felt a bit insulted. US Airways could have quickly validated if I had a frequent flier number (which I do) and found my Star Alliance status. My guess is they could have also discovered I spent over $2200 in airfare since January 1, 2008 (30 times the voucher amount).

I sent a response email to customer service saying I did not want the voucher I just wanted better service the next time I flew. They sent another email apologizing for offending me with the voucher and that my concerns had been delivered to the appropriate management. I ended feeling again like my experience stunk.

US Airways could have righted my experience one of two ways. Picking up the phone after the second email would have been ideal. It would have made me feel appreciated and ensured they understood I was not angry but disappointed. Obviously they cannot do this with everyone, but the reason for loyalty programs is so you know who a customer is and what losing them may mean. Second, though I did not want anything, a full fare voucher would have told me they really wanted me to fly with them.

The point of business automation should be to improve the guest experience, not the other way around.

First Check!

I got my first check for kevin sturm Consulting in the mail on Friday. The first of what I hope will be many...Yeah!

It's Finally Done!

After long hours of figuring out html works and much gnashing of teeth my new "other blog" is finally done. As most of you know I quit my job and started my own consulting firm. As part of this initiative one of things I noticed was that there was very little online content in the way of blogs for hospitality technology. Most of the major industry media organizations have one as part of their website, but there really isn't anything from someone that works day to day in hospitality technology consulting.

So, as of tonight hospitality technology made simple is up an running. It's a blog about trends in hospitality technology. My hope is that the blog will be helpful to venues looking to implement new systems and to consultants in the industry looking to get or give advice. I hope to do some interviews with major figures in the industry, and if people actual find it interesting get a forum up where we can all share ideas for success.

I will only be posting every week or two weeks at this point, so I'll still be updating this blog regularly as my personal blog of business and life in general. If you know of anyone that may find the new blog interesting please point them to it. It will be a couple of months before there is enough content to be really meaty. You can also email me topics that you think would be interesting (if you care about hospitality technology). I'll need the content ideas.

"Seven Steps to Success"

My friend Nazia sent me a "Tip of the Day" email with some wise words from Dr. Mark Goulston (author of Get Out of Your Own Way at Work) on things you should know the answers to when starting your own business. If you want to start you own business make sure you have an answer to these questions.

1. What do you love making (product) or doing (service) that has enough value that other people would be willing and want to pay for (your DREAM)?

2. What desire or problem is your product (what you make) or service (what you do) the best answer or solution to (your VISION and MISSION)?

3. What people or what company has a desire or problem that most urgently needs your product or service, i.e. who are the ones that "Gotta have you!" (your MARKETING)?

4. How do you get those people or that company to be aware of their urgent need for your product or service (your ADVERTISING)?

5. How do you convince those people to buy that service or product that they "gotta have?" (your SALES)

6. How do you get your product or service to those people or that company (your PRODUCTION and DELIVERY)?

7. How do you continue to increase the satisfaction and enthusiasm for your product or service, so they'll tell others (your CUSTOMER SERVICE)?

Don’t Have/Be Lazy Customer Support

Have you ever have one of those days where you were having a really great day, and then a single experience turns it all around? Like the kind of experience that leaves you with a head ache and you want to scream into a pillow. Today was one of those days.

It’s about 9:00 pm tonight and I was supposed to be on my way to Macao as of about 30 minutes ago. But there was a change of plans and I had to cancel my trip. I had booked a $6000 business class ticket on Thai Airways through Orbitz so I wanted to be very sure that I got refunded for the fare when I canceled. I placed a call to Orbitz at about 11:45 am this morning, and below was how I spent my afternoon.

11:45 – Place 1st call to Orbitz and run through this annoying automated prompter that loops back to the beginning if I hit zero. I finally get to Customer Support after 5 minutes and tell Customer Support I need to cancel the ticket. They put me on hold for about a minute, and then tell me they can’t cancel the ticket. I have to call Thai Airways directly and they give me the number.

12:00 – Call Thai Airways and get an answering machine saying they are closed and won’t be back open till Monday, and to please leave a message. This is where I get a bit confused…because apparently the Thai Airways office at Los Angeles International Airport is closed on the weekend.

12:10 – Call back Orbitz and again have to go through the annoying automated prompts. I get a real person and tell him my situation. He puts me on hold for about 10 minutes (this is my guess because I got to hear the full version of Pachelbel’s Canon just over two times) and tells me that there is nothing he can do and I need to call Thai Airways. I ask him if he is sure and tell him there is no answer, so he gives me the number to the Thai Airways New York office because they should be open.

12:30 – Call the Premier Executive number for United and ask them if they can cancel the trip since the first flight is on United. They say they can cancel the Santa Barbara to Los Angeles leg, but that is all. I ask them to do that, and say thanks.

12:40 – Call Thai Airways New York number and get the same answering machine.

12:45 – Go the Thai Airways website and spend 10 minutes trying to find a number to call that I don’t already have. Google eventually helps me get to the London and Bangkok office phone numbers.

1:00 – Call the London office for Thai Airways and get the same voice mail message.

1:05 – Call the Bangkok office which is HQ for Thai Airways. Again I’m into an automated voice system that is hard to understand because of the thick accent. I try to guess on the right number to press so they speak English and guess wrong so I have to hang up because they are not speaking English.

1:10 – Call the Bangkok number back and this time understand the prompts so I get to the English reservations system. The automated response says there is a very high call volume so I will have to hold. It then tells me that I can fax in my request and they will get back to me. I sit on hold for a full hour and no one ever picks up.

2:20 – Call back the Los Angeles, New York, and London office again to see if I can get through. Get voice message at all three numbers.

2:40 – I call Orbitz back a bit miffed at this point. Go through the same annoying prompts and get to another new customer support person. I tell him my situation. He pulls up my ticket and then proceeds to go through every leg of my itinerary with flight number, departure city and time, arrival city and time, asking for verification. After this he tells me because it’s an international ticket he has to transfer me to an international agent. I’m thinking why did the first two guys not do that?

2:50 – Get transferred to an International agent (Henry) and I go through my situation for the fourth time. Henry puts me on hold for about 15 minutes and comes back on the phone and tells me that I need to call Thai Airways. I’m a pretty patient person, but at this point I lose it and rant for three minutes on how poor the customer support is. He says sorry and puts me on hold for another 15 minutes to see what he can do. He comes back on and asks me if I purchased a fully refundable fair. I ask him if he is serious, and how can he not know that by looking at his computer. He says he doesn’t, and I don’t know either because it’s not on my confirmation email. He puts me on hold for another 10 minutes and then comes back on the phone saying I bought a fully refundable fair and he can refund the ticket. I say “GREAT” and can he send me an email confirming that it has been refunded…and he says “NO” (I’m thinking WHAT?) but is willing to give me his name and reference number. I say no, I want a confirmation email from Orbitz saying that they are going to cancel and refund my ticket. He says he can’t do that. I ask why, and he says it’s not possible. Then he tells me I need to call the insurance company that Orbitz uses to insure international tickets to get a refund for that portion of the ticket. I don’t even ask why Orbitz doesn’t handle that at this point, and write down the number. Then he tells me that I’ll be receiving a confirmation email of the cancellation (Did I just get told this was not possible?).

3:20 – I hang up the phone irritated and with a headache, check my email, and see that Orbitz sent me a Customer Service Survey at12:45 pm. I have not filled it out yet because I don’t want to waste any more time on this today. I fill out most of these surveys whether good or bad, but I definitely will fill out this one.

It took me over three hours to cancel an airline ticket because of lazy customer support. I’m guessing that if the first person would have just followed procedures and took initiative I would have been done in about an hour.