73% of consumers say that CX is a deciding factor when making purchase decisions.
Between Nudging, Choice architecture, Neuromarketing and straight up old fashion “buy this now, you need it” strategies, the average person sees between 4,000 and 10,000 ads in a single day. That’s up from 500 to 1,600 ads per day in the 1970’s.
The thin line for brands to walk then is, how to balance between providing an exceptional CXM or CX that the customers wants, yet stand out as the signal among the advertising sea of noise that the customers are swimming in.
While there are resources and tactics for brands to adapt like customer journey mapping, attribution modeling, customer funnels..etc.
Reading Will Guida’s book Unreasonable Hospitality, provided me with these 3 takeaways that I think adds to the brands toolbox and helps deliver a better CX.
1- Memorable Moments are not factory default settings.
As a customer think about the last time an experience really stood out to you. was it the business policies and standards? Or was it specific, personalized and unique to your own experience?
If the brand or business is saying to their customers, you are special just like everyone else, that’s their way of saying no one is special and all customers are the same. Which don’t get me wrong is vital for a brand or a business to have a standard of excellence that they operate under.
yet those memorable moments of unreasonable hospitality has to be unique, specific and dare I say above and beyond those standards.
2- Great Customer experience doesn't have to break the bank.
One of the examples that stayed with me after reading the book, that a waiter at a fine dinning restaurants in NYC, heard the customer on a table he was serving saying that they will regret not having street hotdog while they are in NYC.
Their schedule seemed tight and they had to travel back with that wish unfulfilled, so his extra mile here was he just ordered the hotdogs for them.
while this gesture is not going to break the bank for the restaurant, it defiantly will be memorable for this specific group of NY tourists.
3- Think in Moments
While unreasonable hospitality cannot be like factory work or standardized, every business has the potential situations to create these moments.
Every hospital has the patient that is there for the first health check, every restaurant has the customer that has been a recurring customer for a year, first car purchase, be proactive in thinking of these recurring yet unique to the customers situations.
These are my main three takeaways from the unreasonable hospitality book I highly encourage reading the book, for more context and to gain more insight.
