I’m reading a NYTimes article that’s letting me know that, since times are bad, Hyatt has decided to finally value their customers and do business like the rest of us have been doing it for several decades.
I’m not that impressed, especially since it took a downturn in the economy to force them to use this strategy.
“In the days ahead, managers and employees of the Hyatt hotel chain will be doing favors for some of their customers. Maybe they always did them, but these favors will be different: they will be what Hyatt Hotels’ C.E.O., Mark Hoplamazian, has called “random acts of generosity,” like unexpectedly picking up the tab for your hotel-bar drinks or hotel-spa massage.”
I just stayed at The Renaissance in Tampa, while on business. They already knew how to do favors for their customers, like grab an Escalade and run a couple of guests across the road to a restaurant and then come and get them. Like room service that tastes great and is reasonable, even inexpensive. Like bottled water that’s actually in a bottle, is cold and is free. Like cold water with sliced oranges in it in the massive, exquisite foyer. Like employee’s who are personable, friendly, knowledgeable and professional.
“A coming paper in the Journal of Marketing addresses that very subject. Building on past research on the role of gratitude in human relationships, it argues that a customer who is made to feel grateful most likely becomes enduringly loyal as a result. Gratitude, as the paper bluntly puts it, can “increase purchase intentions, sales growth and share of wallet.”
Are they serious? Did it take you til 2009 to figure out that to get, you have to give.
How long has the rest of the world know about this? Ummm, since about the time that humans were created.
Wait, it gets even better. They have an educrat on board with this drivel:
“Robert Palmatier, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Washington and an author of the paper, says that making a customer feel truly grateful toward a business is harder than it might sound. And the hard-wired feelings of reciprocity that can trigger gratitude can just as easily trigger the sense that you’re being treated unfairly.”
What he’s saying here is he’s never done anything, marketing, customer service or sales-wise, outside of a classroom and he thinks being nice to people might backfire.
The chances of that are around 10,000,000:1 … I’m willing to take that chance.
Outside of my snarky comments, the article really is worth a read.
Reciprocity is real. Humans do respond to it and it shouldn’t have taken you or Hyatt this long to catch on.
By the way, I’m a Hilton family of hotels customer when it’s on my dollar and they’ve been doing nice things for me for years. It didn’t take a downturn for them to give in to this eons-old style of doing business.
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