A Little Intimacy Goes A Long Way

I'll bet some of you saw that title and thought "I wonder where this one is going..."

While travelling on business last week, I stayed at the Embassy Suites in Loveland, Colorado. With our remote call center located there, we spend a fair amount of time in Loveland and have a partnership with the Embassy making them our “hotel of choice”.

An interesting thing happened while I was checking out last week. The employee behind the desk asked me several probing questions about my stay. It wasn’t the typical “How was your stay?” but deeper questions like “Did you enjoy the free breakfast in the morning”. “How was the coffee in your room”, and “Did you have enough space to work comfortably?”.

How often do we hear at the end of a restaurant meal the same old question, “How was your dinner?” On many occasions I’ve answered the waiter/waitress politely and with a smile on my face “It was just okay” and it always amazes me how the comment goes unnoticed.

Creating a sense of intimacy with your customer helps develop a synergy that lets them know you vested in their best interests, that you take responsibility for their success. Embassy Suites probably understands that the business traveler looks at their hotel as a true “home away from home” and if they’re not comfortable with all aspects of their stay, they’ll go elsewhere. As much as I’d like to be out hitting the town when I travel, the reality is that evenings are usually spent getting caught up on your day job. And if I can’t feel comfortable and be productive in my hotel, I’m going to find somewhere else where I can.

Customer intimacy is all about taking a level of responsibility for customer results. It means understanding what they need from you for them to be successful. It goes beyond asking “how can I help you” and more toward “tell me how I can make you more successful today”.

Developing that intimate relationship with your customer, even through a 7-minute phone call, moves them beyond being “satisfied” to becoming “raving” fans. It takes customers beyond feeling good about you and the products/services you offer to them feeling good about themselves as a result of doing business with you. Done well, customers will find you more than a trusted vendor/provider, they’ll see you as an indispensable business partner!