Page 186 - The New Gold Standard

PRINCIPLE 4: DELIVER WOW!
is pretty scary news for businesses in all arenas. Even if you have
a perfect track record of accuracy, meeting delivery deadlines,
product quality, and service with a smile, your customers won’t
be loyal to you. Apparently, we’ve moved beyond the era of ‘de-
lighting’ customers and are now in an era where much more is
expected. Beyond adequate service, consumers today want to be
thrilled, to feel a rush of extraordinary satisfaction by getting
much more value, attention, or enjoyment than they expected.”
Operating from this understanding that customer engage-
ment is linked to the consumers’ wanting “to feel a rush,” Ritz-
Carlton leadership calls this desired memorable and emotional
connection a “Wow experience” and encourages staff to person-
ally affect guests to achieve this level of emotional intensity.
While terms like Wow, thrilled, or rush of energy sound more like
qualities of an amusement ride than something that could be
produced during a luxury hotel stay or a visit to the corner dry
cleaner, the idea of a Wow experience or a thrilling customer in-
teraction hinges less on the inherent exhilaration of the product
and more on delivering service that appeals to both the think-
ing and feeling aspects of the consumer.
Although the bulk of customer contact at Ritz-Carlton and
most businesses comes from those outside of corporate offices,
senior leadership sets the tone for customer care. Leaders help
staff see the endless opportunities they have to wow guests across
all touch points of the guest’s interaction. Ritz-Carlton uses lineup
and formal training to show staff how a guest can not only be
satisfied but also wowed from their initial phone reservation to
well beyond the guest’s departure.

C There Is Only One First Impression D

Service can be memorable either because it delights a customer
or because it leaves the customer sorely disappointed. The im-
portance of delivering a Wow moment at a guest’s first point of
contact is, therefore, a primary goal emphasized by leadership

166