They Took Away the Lids!

One morning at the hotel, I commented, the lids didn't fit the coffee cups – the next morning, they took away the lids. A simple but quirky response - yet I kept coming back. In fact, this hotel remained my top choice.

Here's the thing - hotel management and staff made me feel like I was treated better than most – as a frequent guest, early check-ins were common (coinciding with my train arrivals from Perth); an upgraded suite - often the largest on site; usually able to get a room when all indicators pointed to the hotel being sold out and the hotel worked with me to manage my average nightly room rate.

These actions are consistent with behaviours outlined by Arthur M. Hughes in his book Strategic Database Marketing: The Masterplan for Starting and Managing a Profitable Customer-Based Marketing Program; Loyal customers are profitable because they buy more often, spend more on each purchase, stay around longer, are less costly to serve and more likely to refer others. I pretty much checked all the boxes using this framework.

By no means a road warrior, my travel pattern was frequent and consistent. Travelling every month; requiring 5, 6 or 7 nights accommodation - Toronto for one week returning to Perth for three weeks - every month for close to two years.

Here’s the disconnect - I was recognized at the hotel as an upper-tier customer long before I was recognized as such in their award-winning corporate loyalty program. Sure, I reached Diamond status once I satisfied the program’s spend and frequency requirements however, there was no apparent mechanism informing corporate the strength of the business relationship at the local level.

Strictly transactional interaction with the corporate program; earn & burn points to my best advantage in managing my average nightly rate. Unaware of other corporate program benefits as I was being treated pretty well locally.

Here’s where it completely broke down; failures at both the local and corporate levels when the pattern changed. Corporate and local management did nothing when I broke the one week in Toronto three weeks in Perth pattern, did nothing when my Diamond status was nearing the end and did nothing notifying me my accumulated points were about to expire.

We can all agree loyalty generates significant outcomes; for many organizations it’s the backbone in building value and driving customer engagement. The benefits truly come from weaving together business opportunities, data points, systems and people & processes.

In this case, the company didn’t seem to make the effort to connect these elements together potentially leaving customers out in the cold.

It’s pretty simple is it not ? When a customer behaves in a certain manner over time and the relationship is mutually beneficial, it's imperative that companies work to understand dramatic changes (in this case cease) in customer behaviour and be able to react to these changes.