You’ve Got their Attention. Now What?

When we engage with prospects and clients what it really comes down to is the experience. We pay so much attention to the marketing, the website design, the brochures and yet, what about the actual experience?

We hear and read stories about extraordinary, over the top customer service that explains how some companies grow to mega businesses. The amazing story of Zappos or the over the top customer service and experience at Disney, and we nod our heads because we have either experienced it or we nod our heads as a barrier thinking that this doesn’t relate to our business.

Each business has a culture, a personality, a structure, a process, and a channel. How often do we review the interactions that any outsider would experience when encountering our companies? From initial contact to the collection call… every touch is an experience.

This came alive for me as I am still relishing the amazing meal I had last week while in Tampa on business. Part of my time away I was evaluating our price structure, our service offerings and other aspects of our company as we move forward in 2010. Taking an evening break, I went to the famed steak house Bern’s. I knew I would get a great meal and heard they had an outstanding wine collection so I was psyched to have a treat. What I had instead was a dining experience. A real dining experience that took nearly five hours.

Yes, it was expensive and depending on the bottle of wine ordered or the country of origin for the caviar you might select you could control the amount of the total tab but once you are caught up in the experience, well reason might just go out the window. The waiter was more like a guide than a salesman or waiter, his attentiveness to answer questions and offer assistance guiding you through a wine list that reads like the novel War & Peace, was helpful. The wines ranged in price from $45 a bottle to $10,000 and up per bottle so there was plenty of room to satisfy anyone’s pallet and pocket. There was no selling, no up grading, no promoting of side dishes. Instead there was an engaging conversation that allowed the waiter to uncover our particular tastes, appetite and of course spend level comfort zone and then he made some recommendations accordingly. He got to know us and therefore tailored his suggestions to meet our desires.

Beyond the table experience, we were offered and we took part in a tour of the kitchen and of course the wine cellar. The wine cellar holds one of the largest collections of wine in the world ranging from some of the more familiar to some of the rarest. Row after row, floor to ceiling we were guided toward some of the more interesting bottles.

Once the tour ended, we we’re quite ready to call it a night. So we were escorted to their desert room upstairs where there was a maze of private alcoves built out of wine casks, to sip exotic coffees, ports, and sherries while experiencing the most decadent of desserts.

Five hours after we stepped foot into Bern’s, we received a bill that could have paid for a weekend vacation including airfare; and we did not have a moment’s regret. The experience had been well thought out, orchestrated, rehearsed and perfected from beginning to end and all designed to take you from a good meal, priced accordingly to an experience unlike any other you might have known and a price tag to match.

The receptionist, waiter, table staff, tour guides all of them knew the history and story of the restaurant and even after a long hard evening of work, each played their role with a sense of personal pride that conveyed that they knew that they were a part of something very special and wanted to share that with others.

I came to several conclusions after this experience. First, no matter how creative our designs and marketing strategies are, we might be able to get clients in the door, but it is up to us to keep those clients. If our client’s don’t have an amazing experience with us then will they contract us for more, rave and promote us to their colleagues? And of course, what makes an experience with us different from our competitors? How will prospects know that they have engaged with something very special and want our team to be a part of their team? What are we leaving to chance?

Time to think about the experience of doing business with your company. How do you make it so extraordinary that prospects can’t wait to engage and customers can’t think to negotiate price or shop elsewhere?

We’d love to hear from you about what you are doing in your company and how you have experienced ours.