How to make an impression on long-time, been-there-done-that customers.

January 24, 2012

Filed under: Customer Service, Marketing Strategies, Observations From the Field — @ 10:16 am

Every Tuesday and Friday, an amazing “wartime Paris meets Bourbon Street” band called The Hot Sardines plays at The Top of The Standard in NYC’s meatpacking district. Along with an ever-growing base of adoring fans, I’ve sat through several of their performances and can sing along with most of their songs. I know when they’re about to sing a capella, when the washboard is making an appearance, when Miss Elizabeth is going to sing in French, and when the tap dancer is preparing to do something amazing. So…I love them with passion…but I can enjoy them on autopilot.

Then one day a few weeks ago, when I was expecting the trumpet player to start blowing that horn, this happened instead:

Your eyes are not deceiving you. He is playing a tea kettle. And every single person in the room was captivated…even us veteran fans.

Mr. Tea Kettle just proved a very important marketing point: you don’t need to spend a lot of money to break through the comfort zone that develops when long-time customers become “used to you.” You CAN spend money to do it, but sometimes, a little creativity is all that’s needed to keep it fresh.

Some examples from the field:

Last year, MAC Cosmetics launched a “Wonder Woman” collection, and the inside of every Mac store paid highly visible homage to the stunning superhero with larger-than-life cutouts, comic books, promotional displays and more. But how to lure people in there to see all the goodies? The Soho store on Spring Street in NYC did something unusual: they painted the outside of the store a bright fire engine red. Think about it…I’m not sure it made a difference to the tourists (who don’t know what the exterior of the store usually looks like) but for all those “sheep” that walk up and down Spring Street each day without giving a thought to their surroundings…that red building was brightly colored lure that drew the eye like a magnet.

In another example – and a little more expensive than a coat of paint, but worth it – a clever marketing tactic was used to promote the premiere of last season’s episodes of Boardwalk Empire. Set in Atlantic City, the show chronicles the life of a political gangster during the 1920’s and 30’s Prohibition era. So…while they could have just done a traditional subway “wrap” (where all the ads in a single subway car focus on the same business…eye catching, but becoming so common that us regular subway riders are even becoming desensitized to THOSE), instead, they used authentic Prohibition-era vintage subway cars to make their point. Imagine standing at your usual subway station with your iPod on or reading your book or juggling your bags…and then THIS pulls up…

For those readers not from NYC…I assure you…today’s subway cars look NOTHING like this.

But just like the tea-kettle-turned-musical-instrument, you don’t need to pay a hefty price to “borrow” vintage transportation equipment from a city transit system in order to get attention. Saltscapes, a yummy restaurant in Nova Scotia, makes an impression every time a customer goes to open the entryway door:

I’m reminded of the childhood game Duck, Duck, Goose. Think about the mindset of a customer walking in the door. They just spent the whole day (week…month…year…) opening doors with “normal” doorknobs. So…normal, normal, normal…small wrought iron Adirondack chair? Definitely noticeable.

It’s actually quite easy – and often inexpensive – to do tasteful things that will impress your loyal customers. You just have to put a little love into your thought process and remember that if you don’t continue to woo them…they may be wooed elsewhere. A sad but true fact in the marketing world.

And in that random way that concepts sometimes collide unexpectedly…what do you get when you cross The Hot Sardines with the vintage subway cars used to promote Boardwalk Empire? You get a KILLER concert. Check out the 1 minute and 30 second clip by clicking here.

Hmmmm. Attention Boardwalk Empire marketing people…when you’re ready to promote the next season, give the Hot Sardines and their tea kettle a call. They’ll take your subway car to the next level…because even though you only did it once, that sucker is already in the been-there-done-that bucket.

Redpoint is a marketing PR firm based in NYC that helps clients make strong positive impressions on even the most desensitized of journalists. And…we LOVE The Hot Sardines.

You can’t find love on a spreadsheet.

June 29, 2011

Filed under: Customer Service, Marketing Strategies, Observations From the Field, Spending Budgets Wisely — @ 9:57 am

(Updated March 2022)

Who doesn’t love free dumplings?

While dining at Buddakan a while back, I ordered the Cantonese spring rolls appetizer and mischievously asked the waiter if I could possibly try one Szechuan pork dumpling…just because I couldn’t decide between the two dishes. He winked conspiratorially at me (which I took as a hopeful yes) and went off to the kitchen.

When the food runner came to the table with my spring rolls and my companion’s tuna tartare, I was a bit disappointed. Did I misconstrue the wink?

But then…the waiter himself appeared at my side, bearing – not one – but an entire plate full of pork dumplings. As he set them in the center of the table, he said: “Enjoy these with my compliments. I know you will want more than one when you taste them.” (side note: he was right)

Now…if you own a restaurant, hotel, or even retail shop, did that story make you cringe? Were you thinking, “Damn. If my staff gave away free stuff to every customer who asked for it, I’d go out of business tomorrow.”

But would you? Let’s do the math.

Buddakan lost out on the $10 or $12 it would have earned from me for the dumplings. But, on the flip side:

I ordered an extra glass of champagne, which I wouldn’t have, sans dumplings ($18)
The following week, I told a friend that story and she went there two weeks later with 6 friends ($200 at the bar…$500 at the table)
A month later, I took an out-of-town guest to Buddakan because I had told her the story and she wanted to try it ($175)

So that $10 or $12 expense turned out to be an investment that earned the restaurant nearly $1,000…and that’s just the ROI I know about. Who knows how many people this positive incident actually drew into Buddakan? When you pay it forward like that, it’s impossible to trace the exponential positive effect on your bottom line.

And there lies the problem the hospitality industry has faced for the past few years.

The pandemic has forced us all to become obsessed with spreadsheets, numbers, and tangible-only spending. If the ROI can’t be traced, tracked, maximized, or guaranteed, we’re not spending that precious dollar. We’ve had to cut staff, cut hours, cut amenities, cut benefits, even close our doors temporarily…all for the sake of making those spreadsheets jive and surviving a brutal phase in the hospitality industry’s life cycle. And guess what inadvertently disappeared with all those cuts? Much of the love, fun, warmth, and graciousness that puts the “hospitable” in hospitality. We can’t translate them into tangible revenue streams on our spreadsheets and so…they simply don’t get factored into our decisions.

Well, friends…it’s time to bring them back. People are tired of hearing “no,” and businesses that de-commoditize their experience with fresh infusions of positivity will attract guests with enviable magnetism. And in this age of social media…when word of mouth is more powerful than ever…creating a pool of evangelists is never a bad thing.

Be inspired by the dumpling incident. Regain your faith in the power of goodwill and invest in finding ways to make your customers feel loved. And if your CFO balks at any modest investments you may make, just add a new line item to your revenue spreadsheet:

The Dumpling Effect: Priceless.

Bok choy and the whole shabang…three lessons in customer service.

May 23, 2011

Filed under: Customer Service, Observations From the Field, Effective Communication — @ 8:39 am

So…is this “A Lot” of bok choy?

Recently, when faced with a choice between Chicken with Mixed Vegetables and Chicken with Your Favorite Vegetables on the menu of a Chinese restaurant, my dad planned to go with his Favorite to ensure the presence of “a lot” of bok choy. But just in case the Mixed version was already loaded with bok choy (why pay the extra five bucks unnecessarily?), he asked the waiter what the difference was between the two dishes.

I then spent the next few minutes giggling behind my menu as my dad and the waiter enjoyed a fantastically nonsensical “Who’s on First” dialogue about Mixed vs. Favorite, and just how much bok choy is “a lot.” Apparently, there is NO difference between the dishes, as long as you order the Mixed version and just specify your vegetables. How intriguing. I’ll take the less expensive dish, please.

The very next week, my brother and sister-in-law went to a restaurant called Vero with a group of friends, where they ordered The Whole Shabang. They had told me about this concept earlier, and as a marketer, I thought it was brilliant. The restaurant serves “little plates” of Italian food, and when you order The Whole Shabang, you get one of every single item on the menu – meats, cheeses, olives, bruschette, pasta, fish, chicken…the works. Priced at $500, it’s a neat idea, and a fabulous marketing hook.

They promote it right on the dinner menu in its own special promotional box, so that when you go with just a few people, you see it and think… “Cool! I’m going to come back with a bunch of friends and do this.” …which is exactly what my bro and sis-in-law did.

Imagine my disappointment when I got the post-Shabang recap and it missed the mark. There was resistance to giving the preferred time when making the reservation, not enough servers to accommodate the size of the group (12), drink delivery was exceptionally slow, they missed serving the entire cheese course (what’s this?…The Partial Shabang?), and a host of other small issues. They thought the food itself was delicious, but when you commit to ordering every single item on the menu, you sort of expect to be treated better, not worse, than the “regular” patrons.

These two back-to-back restaurant issues brought three major customer service lessons to light:

1 – Marketing ploys not embraced by the staff cause confusion and disappointment among your guests. Your staff members are the ones delivering on your promises every day on the front lines. If they don’t get it, don’t like it, or don’t want to do it…you could have the coolest-sounding marketing tactic in the world and it won’t work. Training on these points is essential to success.

2 – Anything that is operationally challenging to deliver puts your guest satisfaction at risk. What was intended to inspire positive word of mouth is likely to have exactly the opposite effect. Why take the risk? Either don’t do it, or wait to promote it until you’ve got the kinks worked out.

3 – Consumers are very literal. You write something down in black-and-white, and they expect exactly that. YOU might know what you mean, but if you’re expecting any forgiveness when they discover it’s a loose interpretation…give up that dream. Be very thoughtful in how you position things…on your menus, your websites, your brochures, and more. Over-promising can come back to haunt you.

I’ll let the bok choy incident go…that “Who’s On First” dialogue is actually part of what makes a visit to a Chinese-American restaurant so affectionately memorable. But I’m not willing to throw in the towel yet on The Whole Shabang. Come on – ordering one of every item on the menu? That’s as fun as the Instant Gourmet Kitchen that Redpoint created to market the Masters Collection from the Culinary Institute of America a few years ago (80 items, 5,000 bucks, 3 clicks on the website to purchase).

Stay tuned. I may just visit Vero (with 9 of my closest friends) and test out The Whole Shabang myself, maybe give them a few pointers along the way.

Or, I could just send in My Coffee Guys to host a training session. Lal and Abdul never let me down. Now THAT’S customer service.

The best marketing strategy…EVER.

February 17, 2011

Filed under: Customer Service, Marketing Strategies, Observations From the Field — @ 8:20 am

The coffee cart vendor “guys” on the northwest corner of Spring Street and Avenue of the Americas in NYC might just be the smartest marketers I’ve ever met. But they have never sent me a single email. Nor given me a coupon. Nor “caught” me with a pay-per-click strategy.

They don’t have a website. Or business cards. Or a Facebook page. Heck, I don’t even think they have a brand name (but based on the haphazard, grammatically incorrect signage plastered around the cart…I’d have to guess their brand name is “Coffe and Donut”).

And yet…my recent expression of consumer behavior just proved my loyalty to them beyond a shadow of a doubt.

After nine years of emerging from the same subway exit every morning to grab a coffee from “The Guys” at the very convenient coffee cart right at the top of the stairs…I moved. And on Monday this week, I started taking a DIFFERENT subway line to work, and my path from subway exit to office door takes me past 6 other coffee cart vendors, and NOT past “The Guys.”

But damn if I didn’t walk right past all of them without a single glance, continue past my building’s front door, and head to the corner to “My Guys” (note transformation from general “The” to possessive “My”). And what’s the first thing they said to me?…

“Good morning miss! Why you come from that way today?”

And then I realized why I adore them so much: they are so very aware of me. And not just me, but ALL of their regular customers…and you become a “regular” with these guys by your third purchase. When there’s no line and they can see me coming over from the subway stairs, they have my coffee ready by the time I get to the cart. And when the line is 8 deep and I appear to be antsy, a wink and a nod from them signals me around to the back of the cart for an under-the-radar exchange of coffee-for-money. And when it’s pouring rain in the predawn hours, and I’m fumbling around in my bag to find my wallet, they tell me “No worry, miss. Tomorrow you give.”

What’s the marketing lesson here? Without spending a single dollar on “marketing,” you can inspire loyalty in your customers – and make them ambassadors for your brand – just by doing three simple things: genuinely caring about their needs, serving those needs efficiently, and exceeding their expectations.

I have been to five-star luxury resorts that don’t treat me as well as My Guys do, and yet they make less money off me in one year than those resorts do in one night. This proves that a “brand” can provide exceptional service without fancy training programs, Brand Standards, Mission Statements, marketing tactics, or any of the other hundred “we don’t have the budget for that” excuses that big brands often use as a crutch to justify subpar service.

So…Lal (left) and Abdul (right)…hats off to you. You may have proper names (really?…you mean you’re not actually named Doll, Sweetie, Love, or My Dear, as I’ve been calling you all these years?)…but to me, you’ll always be “My Guys.”