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I know a lot about the hotel.
I have stayed in a hotel between 110 and 150 nights per year for 15 consecutive years.
Some were great. Others, conspicuously less.
But what I like about hotels is that they are incredibly fascinating laboratories for customer experience options. You see, nothing is random in a hotel. Every rack, light switch, and pointless bedside phone had been placed there after much brooding by several groups of people.
We talk about customer experience a lot in business, even here at Convince & Convert . But I think we tend to overcomplicate it. Customer experience (CX) is simply “the way we make our customers feel”. These collected impressions are crucial to the success of any hotel brand, because in the end, it's just a bed in a room.
The boom in hotel brands over the last 5 years – 10 years has been spectacular. Just as ABInBev pushes dozens of Bud Light variants into the market, the major hotel companies (Marriott, Starwood (now incorporated), Hilton, Hyatt and IHG) continue to create new children's brands to appeal to tighter and more niche markets.
There are a number of “design-focused” hotel brands that give guests the experience/feel of sleeping in a modern art museum.
There are a number of “Millennial-focused” hotel brands that deliver the guest experience/sleep sensation in your college dorm, if everyone in your dorm is cool and likes beer. handmade.
All of these brands offer a signal-generating CX option. Each of these signals is intended to call guests…” You are at the right place. You are with your tribe. You are the type of person who appreciates a wall above your bed. And so, you've made a wise choice, weary traveler. ”
Millennial hotel brands like Moxy and Aloft don't mind me too much. They are set up to offer maximum flexibility in the room, with furniture that can slide around, nice couches (as research shows that young Americans avoid working at a lame desk), takeout options, etc
Redesigning hotels is another story. In theory, I should love them. I'm a pretty creative person, and pretend to be a savvy aristocrat even though I'm from a small town in the Arizona desert. These must be my people, and my hotel brands.
However, in reality, they always let me down and down because these brands champion “vibe” over “function” and that creates what I call WTFCX (“Customer Experience”). Fck).
If you have to explain your CX, it's not good
11 years ago, I started my first blog. (Before I even started this blog, it recently celebrated its 10th birthday.) My blog is on Tumblr and it's called “Why Complicated?” Like many Tumblr themes, it is a simple, photo-based premise. Every time I visit a hotel, I post a picture of the shower control. I started this adventure when I was really forced to call down to the front desk for directions.
I am a rather sensitive person. I'm not a very do-it-yourself person, and certainly not a plumber. But, if, after careful consideration, I can't figure out how to make the water appear, it's an overly complicated system.
I dropped “Why So Complicated” after a year or so, and forgot all about it. Until last week.
WTFCX Returns
In the excellent Venn diagram of CX hotel brand choices, “luxury hotels” and “design hotels” intersect in the loo.
Shower controls in design hotels are often “minimalist” and therefore difficult to decipher. After all, only the folds need to be labeled hot and cold. Fancy hotels go the exact opposite route, while producing the same result. “Look at this luxury! Can you believe how many gilded handles and tubes we have installed for your comfort! ”
Recently, I stayed at a luxury hotel in Florida. A quick glance into the bathroom becomes twice as laborious, as there seem to be an abundance of buttons and options. I returned my long-standing call to the front desk for a step-by-step shower. But upon further examination this time, I see… A-HA! A MINING MAP!
Yes, this hotel had SO MUCH PROBLEM with guests not being able to figure out how to shower for which they created an instructional infographic.
Yes, it makes sense to think right now, “Why didn't they change the shower controls?” I suspect this is yet another in a multitude of customer experience decisions that are made with short-term budget in mind, rather than medium- and long-term customer satisfaction.
I present you here the actual treasure map:
Again, I'm not a super machine or anything, but the Treasure Map isn't particularly helpful, especially when I'm faced with REALITY BATH CONTROL:
If you're paying attention - as I've alternated between burns and freezing - you'll notice that even with the map, the controls include fixture diagrams and help documentation.
WTFCX Treats Symptoms, Not Diseases
I think it's safe to say that if you need a sign, plus printed instructions on the valve to operate the shower, the shower itself is already a customer experience dilemma .
What the hotel tried to do was fix the original CX problem by creating an infographic. It is prioritizing symptoms over disease and is a sign of WTFCX.
You probably don't have something as serious as this in your business, but I bet you have something close by. What everyone in the company KNOW is a challenge for customers, but you keep doing it anyway. And instead of fixing it, you try to fix it. You map your own treasure and hope that the finger in the dike holds up.
You know better.
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