Marketing is design

During holidays abroad recently, I had the very agreeable and rare opportunity to visit the Mövenpick hotels, and to experience real good customer service. 

In those five star hotels, you usually get great service, but the best comes with the small “extra” stuff, that makes all the difference…

 

The first “nice” experience happened unexpectedly, when turning back to our chair after a dive in the swimming pool : without having asked anything to the pool team, we found a small newspaper extract with news in French ! They had just heard us speak together, and had kindly provided news in our home language. That was not a need, nor a demand, but it was a really nice attention. (that did not cost much as those news are provided by central head offices to all hotels, to be available in the lobby)

The second experience started badly : we arrived late at the hotel and found that our reservation, made from France, had not been registered!

The bellboy called the manager, who looked things up and luckily found our booking in the central European system. Meanwhile we were offered a drink, and a seat in the hall. Yet we had nowhere to sleep at the time..

To compensate the disagreement and welcome us for the two nights booked, they offered a solution in two tiers, overcoming by far the original annoyance

• for our first night they upgraded us in a suite, far bigger and better than our original room (we jumped on the sofa with joy!)
• for the second night, as our hotel was full, they booked us in another Mövenpick hotel nearby, and offered diner and breakfast! This meant moving hotel, to a less fancy venue –the second hotel was older-, but eating for free largely compensated!

So my conclusion is

1. whether your positioning is luxury or not, if you want to satisfy AND keep your customers, do not hesitate to surprise them with extra, unexpected attentions. (especially if they do not cost much)
2. And when faced with a complaint or dysfunctionning of your service, do not stop with just compensating the product or service, but go beyond it : offer two products, or an extra service; and that will show your customer that his/her value (or lifetimevalue?) is much more important to you than just this one purchase.

Then you will get more purchases, for a long time …