If you can make your customers feel at home—why would they ever roam?
No, I don’t mean a home like my old bachelor pad with a sink full of dishes and garbage that needs to be taken out. I mean a magical home, like the one where, ideally speaking, your customers grew up as kids, where the light bulbs were automatically changed and the groceries in the fridge were chosen to fit their preference, where they were missed when they went to school and welcomed back when they came home.
This homey image has a storied history. The Ritz-Carlton’s founder, Horst Schulze, working with a highly skilled team of linguists, parsed survey after survey to find out what his customers meant when they kept remarking that they wanted his luxury hotels to be ”just like home.”
Ultimately, Schulze and these language experts discerned that his guests
were looking for a business that functioned like a home that is run by a caring
parent. I have yet to find a better archetype for how a business can build
a customer experience that will command true loyalty.
(PS: stay tuned to this blog for how technology and processes can make this home-making easier.)
