Wow: Treat your customers like champs, not chumps

Every day at 9 a.m. in every Ritz-Carlton Hotel around the world the staff gathers for a “wow story.” The purpose is to maintain the legendary customer service that the Ritz-Carlton is famous for. It’s the only company to have won the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the service category twice.

I got to thinking about the “wow story” last night in Abu Dhabi when I got left behind (along with five other passengers) when Etihad Airways decided against holding a flight for five minutes.

Imagine how Ritz-Carlton would have handled the situation. As an example, one of my favorite Ritz-Carlton “wow stories” occurred in Bali where a family checked in with special eggs and milk for their son who suffered from food allergies.

The hotel concierge saw that the eggs had broken and the milk had soured. He asked the dining staff to search the town for replacement items, but none could be found.

The executive chef remembered a store in Singapore that sold the products. He contacted his mother-in-law and asked that she buy the products and fly to Bali to deliver them the same day. The family was beyond delighted, and that one story is just one example of how Ritz-Carlton treasures its customers.

In the last 20 months I flew Etihad Airways between Kuwait and the U.S. on at least a dozen occasions. For most of those flights I bought a business class seat, so my cumulative payout to Etihad wasn’t just chump change.

However, forced to wait five hours for the next flight out, I surely felt like a chump sitting in Abu Dhabi. I even had to use my most persuasive skills to convince Etihad to put me into a business lounge where I could at least work during the long delay.

Now that’s a “wow story” of a different kind. It’s the kind that won’t win any awards, but forces people to re-think their loyalty to a brand.

If you want to build sustaining profits in your business, treasure your customers.

Categorised in: Customer Service

This post was written by Dr. John Hayes