Page 174 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 3: IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

STRIKING GOLD

D Have you helped your staff understand the distinction be-
tween anticipating and fulfilling customer needs?

D What processes do you have in place to track customer
preferences? Is that data being utilized not only to track
customer buying habits but also to personalize customer
service?

D How do you balance your company’s need to track cus-
tomer preferences with your customer’s need for privacy
and secure personal data?

search on someone, we might find out that someone’s a chief ex-
ecutive officer of this company or a graduate of that college.
From the knowledge we capture, we might create a chocolate
plate with their business’s emblem, or design their school’s motto
in chocolate. We wouldn’t do anything that the guest would not
want us to do. It all goes back once again to the culture. Ladies
and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen. It means for
those of us in areas where we seek customer information, that
we treat people with the same respect we would desire.”
The Mystique system not only records individual preferences
but also looks at the customer’s history with the company, af-
fords opportunities to offer additional services based on known
preferences, and provides a method to track operational prob-
lems that the guest has encountered.
Customer relationship management software, like Mystique,
represents a double-edged sword for most businesses. On the one
hand, these technical solutions create the opportunity to capture
and analyze data about customers. On the other, they have the po-
tential to eerily intrude into the choices and habits of valued con-
sumers. While many businesses use these databases to effectively

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