Just checked into a hotel, Affinia, last night to discover that they have pillows with built in speakers and provide a cord for connecting them to your iphone, ipod, etc. Needed? No. Surprising? Yes. Is there something small you can do to surprise your customers? Good surprises can put a smile on their face and give them something to take note of, which means they’re more likely to be come back and spread the word.
During the past few months, our family has been traveling to and fro through small towns in Texas. Good or bad, I’ve become accustomed to the pleasure of a homemade cappuccino early in the morning. Since my cappuccino maker doesn’t travel easily and these small towns have limited options, we recently decided to give McDonald’s coffee a try. I’ve ordered four coffee drinks on two different occasions now. Three were latte/cappuccino varieties and one was plain drip. The only drink that was prepared correctly was the plain drip, but that was after a ten minute wait for them to brew a pot. The other three drinks were all incorrect. Flavored instead of plain, unsweetened instead of sweetened, etc.. 75% ordering failure rate and I bet the corporate office would consider the 10 minute wait for the one correct order a failure too. I’ll round down and call it a 99%…