Note to Hotels - It isn't Just the Bed

I'm back to blogging after a week's vacation in Cocoa Beach Florida ... a week's vacation, with a one day business excursion to South San Francisco to speak at the HR Star Conference on Wednesday sandwiched in.

I flew into SFO late Tuesday night and stayed at the Four Points by Sheraton in South San Francisco. I noticed on my arrival that this chain has decided to differentiate itself with new beds, just like many other chains (which limits the value of the differentiation, doesn't it?) While the bed was nice, and the high speed access appreciated (and now expected), what defined my experience was a bent piece of metal and plastic called a shower rod.

I've stayed in all sorts of hotels from Family Ins to Five Seasons, from Holiday Inn Expresses to Hyatts and Red Roof Inns to Radisons. And in most all of them I couldn't take a shower without part of my body either on the shower wall or on the shower curtain. So I immediately noticed the curved shower curtain rod the the Four Points, because it made the shower a much more pleasant place to be.

The moral of this story is that we can please, delight and wow Customers in many ways, and some of the best ways are little ways.

Whatever your business, look for your equivalent of the curved shower rod. And remember that all the little things that might not even cost anything, might mean more to your Customers than the big new planned investment in a branded bed.

What is your curved shower rod?

How Customer Focused is it?

A random act of surfing tonight led me to Armytage and Mason Blog (subtitled The Blog for Strung Out Managers Everywhere!). Their most recent post shared a link to an interesting website - Customer Focus Calculator.

The site says, "As proud as you may be of your company and your product or service, most customers only care about how well you can help them meet their wants and needs. If you want more of them to buy, your focus has to be on your customer. How do you communicate that to them? With the words you use on your site. Are you talking mostly about them and their needs or are you talking mostly about yourself?"

The calculator analyzes a webpage you submit or it can review any copy from a brochure, advertisement, to help you see where the focus of your copy is.

It isn't perfect, but they don't purport it to be, but it is a great way to look at how Customer focused your writing is.