Over and above

- My next idea for how to delight your customers is can you give them more than they expect? So whatever you're doing, can you push it a bit further? I've got a few examples to illustrate this. The first one was that when we visited Greece, we stayed in Athens for few days. What a great city Athens was! And the hotel we stayed at was a little boutique hotel on the edge of Athens. It wasn't very expensive and it wasn't in a particularly posh part of town, but it was a really nice little hotel. Email me and I'll give you the details 'cause I'd really recommend the hotel. Why would I recommend the hotel? Well, one of the things they did was that when we arrived, there was a chocolate on the pillow. It was one of those little gold, sort of triangular prism-shaped chocolates. It wasn't a Toblerone. It was sort of more milky than that. But anyways, really nice little gold triangular prism of chocolate. So I immediately ate that. And we went out for dinner or whatever and when we came back, to my surprise, there was another one on the pillow. 'Cause I thought there'd be one when you arrived at the hotel and that would be it, but no, they put another one out there. So anyway, the next day we went out. When we came out, when we came back again, there was another chocolate. And then what happened was we were leaving the hotel and I realized I'd forgotten something. So I went back to my room and already on my pillow was another chocolate. And I couldn't work out how they were doing it. I wondered if there was a little man in the cupboard. And every time I leave the room, he pops out of the cupboard and does a chocolate and he goes back in the cupboard because how are they doing that? And I think what they must have done, was when you left the hotel and you gave in your key, they must've immediately gone upstairs and put a chocolate on your pillow, which, I mean that's real dedication, isn't it? (laughs) I started going out and coming back in again just to get another chocolate. And we must've had loads. But I thought that's an amazing system. There were some other good things about that hotel and I'm going to come back to that on some later videos. But just a couple of other examples of giving you more than you expect. On my tip of the month, I quite often put a P.S. and I've started a little tradition of putting quite a few P.S's I have P.P.S and P.P.P.P.S and P.P.P.P.P.S. And I keep thinking of little extra things to mention, films I've seen that were good or music to recommend or questions for people. And it's just going a bit further than you would expect having some P.S's. And some people say they liked my P.S's. I don't know. I've already mentioned cleaning your car when it's serviced. That's going beyond the expected. And when I do a training course for people, I quite often give them a free book, just a little mini book that I've made. So if it was something like, if we're doing a customer care course, I've got a little customer care mini book and I give a copy to each person and they probably cost a pound each to print. So that's probably 15 pounds it's cost me. But the delight factor I think is worth it 'cause you're not going to throw that book away. You're going to keep it somewhere. And then in years to come, when you think, "Who should we get in to do the training?" You'll think, "Oh yeah, that guy who gave us the book. We liked him," and they'll get the book out. And there will be my details on the back of the book. So a free book is an example of just going a bit further than people expect. And the final example I've got was that we had some builders who did our kitchen revamp and we extended the kitchen and that was all great. And the builders said, "Are you going to have a TV on the end wall?" And we said, "No, we don't think we need a TV in the kitchen." And they said, "Oh yeah, you've got to have a TV." And they said, "Well, look. We'll just put the wires in any way. Shall we, just in case?" And I went, "All right then." So when they'd finished the kitchen, there was just this wire sticking out of the wall. And I said to them, "Okay, we're going to have to get a TV now, aren't we?" And the guy was going, "Well, yeah, but I know really good place where you can get a lovely big TV really cheap. I know the guy. It's brilliant. Shall I get it for you?" So he not only recommended where to buy the tele, but he actually bought it for me. He said, "I'll get it." So he went and bought it, brought it back. He did all the installing, the brackets, put it all in, plumbed it all in and made it work for me. And I had to pay him for the tele, but I was fine with that. So his mate was happy cause he got to sell a tele. I was delighted. I've got a great big tele in my kitchen now, which is great. But the main thing was, I'm really pleased with the builder because he looked after me. He was like a friend. He did everything for me. And so that idea of just doing a bit more than expected. So for you, when you do whatever it is you do for your customers, what would the next step be if you were going to do a bit more than they were expecting?