Jul
19
How To Avoid Blowing Your Customer’s Mind
Recently, we took the kids to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Because we stayed three nights we got discount, and paid about $300 a night. I think the regular price was a little over $400.
Great Wolf Lodge is where it’s at for the under-12 set. Four-story waterpark. Indoor river. Wave pool. Talking trees. Full-sized arcade. Minigolf. Nightly story time complete with cookies and milk. Pajama parties. Cheap gift shop full of child-centric vulgarity.
Most kids would give their non-dominant hand for one night in a regular room. Since I am nothing if not over-the-top, we went for three and got one of the kid cabin suites with camp-themed bunk beds with a fucking Nintendo attached. As far as my sons are concerned, I basically bought them a harem for their birthday.
For the first several hours at Great Wolf Lodge, I was 200% happy. I didn’t realize places like this existed. My mind was blown.
Then a few things happened, and I became only 99% happy. We’d brought a bunch of DVDs in case the kids didn’t have the eye-hand co-ordination for the Nintendo. It never occurred to us to ask if they had DVD players. (Our room had two Nintendos, for God’s sake, although tragically not the ones that can play DVDs.) But no, no DVD player. They didn’t do anything wrong, really. They never promised a DVD player, but I kind of figured they’d have one.
Then they didn’t have any TV. Like, none. Pay per view only, and even then, only full length feature films and mostly for adults. There were a few for older kids, but nothing Jack could watch. Maybe some parents can sit back and enjoy a film for grown-ups with their kids sleeping 15 feet away, but we are not among them.
Again, they didn’t do anything wrong. They never promised us Dora. But given everything else they were doing for kids, I figured they’d have a clue on the TV front.
The website said you could borrow board games. The book in the room said you could borrow them, yes, but only in the lobby.
There were signs all over the hotel advertising No Parents Allowed pajama parties for preschoolers. My three-year-old reads the signs and gets excited. The signs don’t say that they’re only for kids over four. Bummer.
For future reference, when I am the mother of a four-year-old, I’ll also have to remember that even though the signs tell us to book early because the spots fill up fast, they actually cancel them quite frequently due to lack of attendance. So I suppose it’s possible that when he’s four and really, really excited because he’s been waiting for a whole year for this, he’ll still get turned away because not enough kids signed up.
There was a Pizza Hut in the hotel that did room service but no menu in the room. There was babysitting but they didn’t have procedures on how to book it. Half the (admittedly VERY reasonably priced) products had no price tags.
They asked me in the pool-side restaurant if I wanted a child-sized hot dog or an adult-sized hot dog. I say child. She says I can’t have that because I didn’t get fries. I don’t mind that — they have to make their money somehow — but I’d like to see the three-year-old that can actually consume that much food.
And yet, I was happy. I went away to what could have been Hyperactivity Hell for four days with no nanny and a head cold. It could have sucked. I was pretty sure it would suck, actually. But I had a great time and so did the kids. (If you ever go, the river pretty much kicked the ass of anything else I’ve ever done.)
So you had a great time. Great. Then what’s with the bitching?
Imagine you’re dating. You meet a guy (or girl, but for the purposes of this story we’ll pretend it’s a guy) and all signs are pointing to serious potential. Broad shoulders. Dry-cleaned jacket. Good car. Great job. Close but not close relationship with his mother. Acceptable taste in movies. Knows how to read. Sexy laugh. Gives you smouldering glances over your Pinot Noir. Practised in the art of double entendre. Gives amazing neck rubs.
He never comes out and says he’s going to be the greatest lay of your life, but it’s implied. And if he turns out to be less than stellar in the intimate arts, you blame him even more than you would blame your last boyfriend, Chuck the Illiterate Telemarketer, because you expected better. Is it your own goddamn fault? Yes. Does that matter? No.
My point, and I do have one
If you cannot be absolutely certain you’re going to knock it out of the park in every area of customer experience, don’t imply it. Give yourself permission to suck a little bit. Your customers will actually appreciate it. This is one case where you might be better off NOT blowing their minds.
If you don’t maintain a regular posting schedule on your blog, your customers will be more likely to forgive you when it takes you a few days to get back to their voicemail. They don’t expect any better and they’re here anyway. They like you in spite of your faults.
This definitely comes into play when we start on scalability. (And by the way? PLEASE don’t get me started on scalability.) You kick unholy ass now, when you have no customers, and when you have customers, you start to suck. It’s natural. It happens to all of us. But you’ll be a lot better off if you start to suck early and get people used to it.
Bonus point
If your offering has a process that takes any amount of time at all – you run a hotel or a restaurant or even (gasp!) a consulting process – it probably wouldn’t hurt you to ask if your customers are satisfied with the process. Maybe even (double gasp!) ask if they’re happy. I lost count of the number of times someone told me to “have a Great Wolf day”. But not once did they ASK me if I was having a Great Wolf day. That would’ve been a nice touch.
So, I just have to suck a little out of the gate? This, I think I can handle.
Wow Naomi!
You put into words what I have been experiencing the past few months. I have stayed in at least 12 hotels in the last three months and have had similar experiences in many of them. From Intercontinental to Springhill Suites, they all look great on their website, but many of them fail to deliver on what their marketing materials are promising. In many cases, it feels like the people doing their marketing have never actually stayed at the property.
Imagine that!
My advice to the hospitality industry is to be clear about what you offer, deliver on what you put in your marketing materials, and put yourself in your customer’s shoes once in awhile.
What ever happened to the concept of under promise and over deliver?
You can’t watch grown-up movies, but you’re okay with him having a fucking Nintendo?
Huh? Oh, “fucking” was just an expletive, not actually describing a new feature of the … okay, nevermind.
We’ve been to Kalahari in Sandusky, which is the same type of deal. Including the story time and pajama parties. The room-service pizza was surprisingly good and surprisingly cheap. The water park was great. (Though climbing eight flights of stairs to the top of the slides seventy-three times in two hours was a bit much.)
But something was missing. It was too … generic. Like I could expect to see the exact same sanitized, corporate family fun at every other giant indoor water park, so why should I come back to this one?
These places are all insanely expensive to build and run. They’re objectively worth what it costs to go there. But my family just spent three days in a tiny bungalow near Geneva on the Lake, OH. There’s one water slide, a mile-long strip of 50-year-old shops and attractions, a park and a beach. And the kids had a blast.
There’s no place else you can go to Eddie’s Grill. Kalahari doesn’t have cruise night or bike rallies.
Kalahari has a theme, but it doesn’t have character.
The actual fucking Nintendos were at a very different type of resort.
YES YES YES on the little place on the beach. We’ve got a place in Ireland for a family reunion thing this summer and the thing I’m most looking forward to is the… nothing. Like, look! Grass! A tree! Go have fun!
Also, the wine. And 12 potential babysitters. Looking forward to those too.
Are you going to forward this post on to the Great Wolf Lodge Naomi? Feedback, particularly with ways to improve, is always good. :-)
Maybe. Although if they don’t have Google alerts, they may not deserve to know. ;)
Hehehe, touché! (the spellchecker didn’t like ‘touche’ – it suggested the word ‘douche’ instead!)
I believe Great Wolf Lodge doesn’t want to blow the parent’s minds, only the kid’s. It’s the best place they’ve ever been and the Lodge knows kids will pester their parents until they give in and return. I hated it. My husband hated it. Kids ask weekly when can we go again. Also they send puzzles and games in the mail so the kids don’t forget.
Also excellent advice, I will do my best to suck more.
Sounds a lot more positive to “under promise and over deliver” than to “give yourself permission to suck a little bit”, but in the end I guess it is just a matter of semantics.
Yes that is exactly what I was going to say. Businesses that do that almost always end up leaving you delighted, or at least very satisfied.
I wonder if it does however make them also aim a little sub-par instead of wowing customers in areas they know they can.
This makes a lot of sense. Also, am I the only one who thinks “No Parents Allowed” pajama parties sound crazy creepy?
Yes. Very creepy. However…
Sleep deprived parents do not care about creepy. In fact, I am trying very hard to come up with a witty creepy thing to use as an example of what I would be willing to make my son endure and I can’t. This could be because I’m too sleep deprived to think of something.
Alternatively, it could be because I DON’T CARE HOW CREEPY IT IS, JUST TAKE HIM AWAY AND GIVE HIM SOME GODDAMN COOKIES.
How about sitting on the lap of some random fat guy in a red suit once a year? My younger daughter was freaked right the hell out by that idea. We’ve got some absolutely classic pictures of her trying desperately to get away from him.
Things like that really irritate me. I wonder sometimes if they irritate me because in the past I did shedloads of customer research, and I know it’s often the stupid niggles that bring down an experience. It bothers me, though, and I think it’s because these gaps make me suddenly think that the people behind the set-up actually have No Bloody Idea. Or perhaps that the need for money blinkered them to the bleeding obvious, like kids in child-friendly hotels wanting to watch child-friendly DVDs.
Every service company in the world should start their day by reading these words: “I lost count of the number of times someone told me to “have a Great Wolf day”. But not once did they ASK me if I was having a Great Wolf day. That would’ve been a nice touch.”
I actually dated that guy in 1989. Never got to the terrible lay, because he was the worst kisser EVER. A real shame, too. He was a beautiful man.
[sigh]
overpromisimg is definitely bad for biz.
Close but not close relationship with his mother.
Damn, if only this had been written 10 years ago…! (Not that the writing wasn’t on every wall in North America).
Interesting caveat against over-marketing your wares. Also, asking for feedback can never be under-estimated. I’ll try that today, and hope that the answer doesn’t include the word ‘suck.’
Ha. A high school friend told me this back then, in the context of parents: you have to start screwing up your life in small ways and disappointing them early, to get them used to it. Because if you’re too good, and you wait to disappoint them, they’ll have no practice and no perspective.
I can say with absolute certainty that if they cancelled the pajama party on my daughter that she would just organize her own in the lobby.
Full permission to suck a little = gold. Also gold: “Chuck the Illiterate Telemarker”. Giggling away in the eye doctor’s office. You know, the one whose assistant tells you to allow 3 hours for the appointment. Talk about managing expectations.
Thanks for helping make the 3 hours go faster.
This was the first article I’ve read of yours and I really enjoyed myself. I’ll definitely be reading more because I like the way you keep it real, while also giving us useful tips! And of course dropping the f-bomb is always appreciated! :)
This is very interesting because I feel like I might have painted myself in a corner. I currently answer consulting questions on the weekend and I’m trying to figure out if I can change that policy so late in the game without having them feel like you did when you learned there was no TV in your room. There are some things you just come to expect.
The hype is always a giveaway, isn’t it? Great Wolf Lodge has too many bus stop ads and billboards. If it’s that great, why do they have to spend so much money telling us? Too much advertising is just as bad as not enough.
I had a client who was in a nursing home that kept screwing up. I was having to call them all the time to keep them from evicting her and every time I called I was more and more pissed off. And they always answered the phone “Welcome to Shady Acres Nursing Home, where every day is a great day!” and I’m like “It would be a lot more great if you could just have your boss call me back and stop trying to evict my client.”
I would have been happier with a gruff “yeah?” when they picked up the phone than some fake lie.
Thanks Naomi – I was just figuring out how to tell everyone about my suckiness in a way that would draw them in and you just gave me the validation I need. As far as asking what they thought – such a great point (though I feel like that always attracts the wackos who are just dying to criticize something.) BIGGEST THANK YOU for turning me on to “THE GREAT WOLF” – they have one in WA:)
Dara
Under promise and over deliver – got it!
Strong finish. Very. Your point came across. What a radical concept, asking customers if they’re happy.
As for sucking a bit, it’s front of mind as I scramble to get all the parts of the new website in place, so that I can tell my clients those things are important without feeling like a hypocrite. Cause damn it, they are important, but so is getting the work done that pays the rent.
I’ll get the Facebook Fan Page up real soon now. Truly. A little bit every day. Must breathe, and practice what I preach.
P.S. Send that date my way if he’s teachable. Anyone who can give amazing neck rubs has promise.
yes you are right, its like accumulating credit as long as you are doing well which can allow customers to forgive you later on
did you tell them your ‘disappointments, naomi?
bcoz if you had, you would have got a look that said you must have come from mars. i mean… “we are the greatest guys, with the greatest ‘customer experience model’ in the industry…”
“you must be a wierdo not to see that”
i would anyday prefer a guy who thinks he sucks, and he doesn’t how to keep his customers happy. bcoz… he asks. and genuinely listens. bcoz… he is doing it for HIMSELF, not the customer.
by the way, did you get those stares? or that plastic, tolerant smile?
It’s a difficult balance, one’s own expectations, hopes and wishes being read into marketing material and other people’s testimonials. I used to have a pessimists approach, saying that it’s better not to expect anything and therefore avoid disappointment. I no longer subscribe to that theory. I think a little disappointment is good from time to time – just enough to put things in perspective. Like you do in this post. Thanks!
Great post but … did you say they had talking trees? I couldn’t concentrate properly on the rest of it because I was wondering what talking trees are, where they come from, and how I can get one.
Seriously though, I do get your point and it is a good one. Many small business owners are too eager to please!