10-18-12 I Love Staying at Bed & Breakfasts

My husband and I just returned from a short trip to Oregon where we spent a night each at a Bed & Breakfast in Yachats and in Astoria.

Because I love lots of personal service and attention, I love Bed & Breakfasts.  Each one is a unique experience, and I have learned that most of the owners really invest a lot in what I have been calling customer service.  When you stay in most corporate motels and hotels, a paid clerk and other staff tend to your needs.  When you stay at a B & B, in most instances, you are greeted by the owner who has a vested interest in seeing that you are totally satisfied.

I notice the personal touches that each B & B owner adds to the mix.  Sometimes the buildings are especially quaint; sometimes the rooms have a feeling of being in a different country.  There can be spectacular breakfasts, and often the host or hostess can provide lots of information and advice about places to see or where to have an excellent dinner.  It also seems to be part of the package that most B & B owners love what they are doing and have a passion for helping to make your stay especially memorable.

And, there was something new that I experienced at the two places where we stayed:  The Ambrosia in Yachats gave us a canvass tote bag with their name on it, and the Benjamin Young in Astoria gave us a print of a 9 X 12 drawing of the historic home with a handwritten “Thank you” on the back.

So, even though I may never stay in Yachats or Astoria again, I’ll certainly be telling people about my experiences and showing off the gifts I received.

I think there are marketing messages in this that go beyond Bed & Breakfasts.

I must also add that Rich and I have stayed at several Bed & Breakfasts on Whidbey and had similar experiences.

10-11-12 10-11-12 Tourism is great for many businesses, but most businesses need a steady stream of local customers

There are many store front businesses on Whidbey that put a lot of energy into catering to tourists.  And, this is a good thing.  But let’s not forget that most businesses need lots of local support year round to have a profitable enterprise.

I’ve mentioned in a previous Blog the value of keeping track of where your customers live (·  4-19-12 The simplest marketing research tool) as a guide to how much you focus your energies on people living near your business vs. tourists traveling to the Island.

 My guess is, if you keep track year round, you’ll find that the majority of your customers live within a short range of your business.  It’s also my guess that what you do to satisfy your local customer base will also work for tourist business as well.  Here are a few of my ideas (feel free to add some of your own):          ·       

•  Nothing builds customers like customer service: greeting every person with a smile and a “hello” as soon as they come through the door; being helpful, even if the person is asking about information that may not be your business; striving to give the person the best possible service in all aspects.
• Provide special incentives for regulars to come back to your store (special offers; regular customer discounts, etc.).
• Encourage customers to send others to you (again, with incentives and special offers, or simply making the request).
• Do follow-up whenever you can to find out how satisfied the customer was with every aspect of doing business with you and shopping in your store.
• Promote your business through local publications and connections with local non-profits.

Of course, the simplest way to determine how to provide good customer service is to ask yourself what you appreciate when you go into someone else’s business.

10-4-12 A personal phone call can mean a lot

How often have you had the experience of calling a large company, especially a financial institution, and getting a recorded message, usually ending with “Press 1 for ……….?”

One of the biggest advantages of being a local business is that you can offer a special element of customer service that is lacking in many places today: phone contact with a live person who listens and can answer questions.

I got a phone call from a real person at the Freeland Branch of Whidbey Island Bank a couple of days ago.  She was calling to let me know that in doing my on-line banking, I was bumping up against a Federal regulation regarding how many times I can withdraw money from a savings account and transfer it to a checking account.  She spent several minutes on the phone with me, explaining every detail and answering my questions.  She ended the conversation by saying, “I’m calling because you will be getting a written notice in the mail and we wanted to be sure you’d understand what it was about.”

Now, I could be wrong, but it’s my guess that if this had happened with one of the large multi-national corporate banks, I would have simply gotten a form letter with the warning.  If I would have attempted to call someone to talk about it, I most likely would have gone through several “Press 1…..” before I might get to someone who could talk with me.

I know we live in an age of emails, text messages and lots of other impersonal ways businesses communicate with customers or potential customers.

Just remember, every time you make a positive, personal connection with a customer – either by phone or in person – you establish, or reinforce, customer loyalty.

9-27-12 Making sense from an informal, open-end survey

Readers of this Blog know I have strong feelings about doing legitimate statistically valid surveys.  Still, many businesses choose to create simple questionnaires they distribute to customers to get a reading on products and/or services being offered.

A simple questionnaire is one that includes three or four open-end questions.  “Open-end” means that no possible responses are given to the person, so they can fill in anything they want for a response.

Trouble is, when you get a lot of responses, it can be difficult to assess a trend or consensus that you can use to improve or change what you’re doing.  So, here is the process I use:

Write down verbatim each of the responses for a question, going through about 20 completed questionnaires.  Then look at them and see if there are patterns that you can paraphrase, such as types of products, emotional responses (they like or don’t like something), general ideas or suggestions that fit a pattern, etc.  Once you can identify three to five items that seem to apply to many of the responses, you can assign a code number to each of these items.  As you go through additional questionnaires, you will hopefully see that most responses fit into one of the codes you have created; if they don’t you can create an “Other” category.  However, if you suddenly notice a pattern in some of the “Other” responses, you can combine them and create an additional code.

When you are done coding the responses, you can tabulate them and see what patterns emerge.

By the way, most people love answering open-end questions because they feel they can truly communicate something that is important.  However, open-end questions can be very frustrating to tabulate and come to some conclusion that will benefit a marketing program….unless you can do what is described above and create a process where responses can be tabulated.

9-20-12 Why do a survey?

It seems like I get a Survey Monkey, or some similar kind of email survey, at least a couple of times a month.  As someone who has written hundreds of marketing research surveys in my professional life, I am often bemused at the lack of focus and the inhibiting types of possible responses I see.  The maverick in me often wants to provide an answer that’s different than what I’m offered.

The major question I always ask myself is “What is the purpose of this survey?”  In other words, what will be done with the information that is gathered, and how accurate will the material be that is collected?

The most common purpose for doing a survey is a need to gather information about a group of people – often customers or potential customers – that will impact how you market your product.  If the responses to a question do not fit this purpose, they should not be included. 

And, if you do not have a clear purpose for doing a survey in the first place, why waste the time and energy?