Are you delivering a £31.875 experience or a £89 experience?
In business, we’ve got to consider if what we’re charging is in proportion to what we’re delivering.
If you’re charging a premium price, are you delivering a premium service or product? If you’re charging peanuts, are you delivering a low-end service/product too?
And if you’re offering discounts and promotions of any kind; what is the objective behind it? Do you just want to attract more customers (of the ‘any will do’ category) or are you targeting your ideal customer (do you even know who your ideal customer is?).
Often we lower our prices to get new customers however you have just de-valued your product or service there. And you will likely begrudge delivering it for that low price. Recipe for disaster for you and your customer. Unless you have lowered your price for a guaranteed volume of work however you still must make a profit and deliver greatness.
A clever and well-executed promotion can pay off hugely. You can run a promotion with discounted prices and you then deliver such an incredibly positive experience that your new customer becomes a loyal fan who is happy to return and pay full price and tell others all about you.
I’m on this subject as, yesterday I treated Mrs McK and I to a Spa Day at a local establishment in Newcastle, the Village Hotel chain. You’ve got to value and invest time in ourselves and our relationships so a day off work was booked and I looked for somewhere to go. I discovered a deal on Groupon for this Spa Day at £75 for both of us, then got a further (Black Friday) 15% discount bringing the price to £63.75. So that’s £31.875 each. What a bargain I thought, I’m having that. I was also aware that you get what you pay for, however knowing the facilities of Village Hotels from others I’ve used, I figured it should be a fairly good experience. I figured they must be discounting it to get people through the doors, wow them and get them to return again being happy to pay full price.
Oh no, nothing like that at all.
The experience was average overall and I would not return there for a spa day. So what have the Spa achieved? They got two new people into their ‘shop’, with a chance to shine but we walked away with no intention to return and no intention of telling anyone else to go there. The discounted offer has back-fired massively for them.
Or perhaps this is how every client feels, even the ones paying full price?
Now let’s get specific. On arrival, we were greeted with a false smiling bluntness from the girl on the desk, her favourite phrase being “that’s perfectly fine”. It felt like Groupon customers were lepers! Or is this her general demeanor for all clients? We were late to be fair (45mins) due to traffic but that’s no reason to treat customers any different and we were told that we’d now missed an hour of treatment and given no alternatives. When we asked for an alternative, there was magically an option available. So quite a blunt unhelpful attitude.
We were asked to sit and fill in a form which was fine and standard procedure in a spa. “I’ll bring you a pen”. No pen arrived. Ever. Sat there just looking at a wonky form that’d been photocopied a million times, stuck to a broken plastic clipboard. The little details really do count when trying to create a wonderful experience. Just as well we had our own pen in our bag. You may think this petty, but it’s the little things that count is my point.
We weren’t given a guided tour of the facilities at all; very much a ‘here’s your towel, here’s a padlock for the locker, now get on with it’. The guys in the gym were no help either on this. The team working together to create an experience isn’t on the agenda here.
The swimming pool area was cold, no real warmth or relaxing atmosphere to it. The staff were wandering about looking fairly sullen. And it’s the little things that make an impact for me; the staff not wearing the blue overshoes around the pool area and scruffy marks, dust and a general ‘everything needs a good clean’.
On the plus side, the lovely lady who did our treatments (Anna) was a star, such a good soul and she delivered a positive experience. Also, the food and service in the bar upstairs were great. And there was a Starbucks and the staff in there (especially Rob) were brilliant – they all know customer service and creating an experience.
So bringing me to my point, this blog isn’t just a rant from me; I actually still enjoyed the day and just got on with it, we make it what we want don’t we. If I wanted to have a bad day then I would have. But I wanted a good day so I had one – I had a day off work, with the wife, I was massaged, then relaxed, ate well, met some lovely people, had quality time with the wife, had a good workout and came home feeling good.
But the situation simply got me thinking. What are we doing every day to ensure we aren’t doing ourselves a disservice. Have we got the best people representing our business; do you employ ambassadors for your company? Have you trained them in customer service? Do you ask for feedback from customers? If you got average or negative feedback, would you listen to it and change anything? If you got positive feedback, would you thank/praise/celebrate with the staff?
Are your promotions actually de-valuing and doing damage to your business?
Or have you simply got people in your business who are causing damage, little by little, every day, with the team and your clients? Little subtle things you might shrug off when / if you do notice but the compound effect is causing you massive damage in the long run.
Take a look at your team.
Take a look at the experience you are delivering.
But also remember, you won’t get it right 100% of the time. Sometimes a client’s expectations are quite difficult to meet, especially one driven by price who expects a premium experience but doesn’t want to pay for it.
I certainly wasn’t expecting a Seaham Hall experience for £31.875 each. No, Seaham Hall spa days are £89 each but they are absolutely fantastic. They know how to do it. So the next time I have a spa day (and I’ve got one scheduled) it will be at Seaham Hall.
Or sometimes, regardless of price, things can just go wrong – we simply need to stop, investigate, refine & tweak our experience so that we don’t repeat it with others. How we deal with negative feedback can make or break the relationship. Poor feedback is the chance to improve; if you want to.
Or you could just keep lowering your prices, attracting new customers, delivering an average at best experience (or perfectly fine!) and the vicious cycle continues. Result = a stagnant business going nowhere.
“Perfectly fine” therefore is not good. The young lady on the desk summed up the whole experience in everything she repeatedly says and does. Perfectly fine (or average). Fine does not drive your business forward and achieve success.
Perfectly fine needs to be perfectly positive and wonderful; getting it right at every touchpoint; wowing your clients and turning them into raving lunatic fans. And if something goes wrong, you deal with it, learn from it and make improvements to keep wowing. And if a client’s expectations cant be met, then just shake hands and bid them a good day, you tried your best.
Start from the inside. Look at yourself and then your team. Look at your prices, look at your clients, look at the experience you deliver. Are they all aligned with long-term success? Or are you just dropping prices to get the work to survive? If yes, then this will ultimately kill you.
Aim to be perfectly excellent every time.
#heretohelp
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