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Creating Expectations Customers Didn’t Already Have – Maybe

Blog: BPM Unplugged - David Novick

Recently, I’ve discovered something that I had long thought about, myself – Hilton Hotels’ Homewood Suites chain has launched a product that allows customers to select the actual room they want when they stay.  For years, we’ve been able to select our own airline seats.  And, we can select our own seats for theater and sporting events.  And, now, our hotel rooms.

Perhaps deep in the recesses of our “traveler’s” minds, we’ve always wanted to be able to select our own rooms.  After all, not every experience with a hotel is consistent if each room we get is markedly different, and perhaps detrimentally so, than the previous room.  I know this from first hand experience since many times I will stay at the same hotel in the same city and get very different room experiences each time.

But, what Homewood Suites has done is reached out and identified a customer need that, if not overt in every traveler’s mind, certainly one that may make sense – just as advanced seat selection did with most airlines beginning in the late 70s and early 80s.

In the words of Steve Towers, this is Outside-In thinking.  Homewood Suites identified a need that customers may have started to articulate and pushed forward with it.  While it remains to be seen how much this need becomes a true expectation for travelers, if it does become one, Hilton has now created a standard for meeting it that other chains are going to have to follow or even exceed.

Which now goes back to my original opener – this was something that, along with other travelers I am sure, I thought was something hotel chains should have been providing for years but went along with the status quo because, well, no one was doing it.  What’s more, I am not a hotel expert – just a mere customer with a thought about a need that, now, someone in the hotel world identified and acted upon.  Now, having my own thoughts about being able to select your own room and layout does not prove that it does not take a subject matter expert in the hotel business to conceive of a need, it does suggest that being a subject matter expert in any business does not assure that you understand what your customers really need to be successful.  While it’s one thing to know your business it’s quite another to actually reach out to your customers and ask them “what can we do to make YOU more successful?”

Perhaps Homewood Suites just surmised what would make travelers more successful.  Maybe they didn’t actually sit down with customers to find out.  But, they certainly stepped outside of their usual world, put themselves in the shoes of their customers, and discovered a need, that may be the basis of a whole new expectation for all hoteliers in the future.

Posted in BPM Unplugged Tagged: BPM, business process, business process management, customer care, customer process management, LinkedIn, process improvement

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