Companies in the high-end service industry often do much more than turn a blind eye to the extramarital escapades of their guests. "[T]he owners and managers of the world's most exclusive restaurants and hotels pull out all the stops to make sure their best customers can conduct their affairs there with ease," says Sara Reistad-Long at The Daily Beast.

You might disapprove of such active collaboration in a client's infidelity, but there's still something to be learned from their fanatical devotion to premium customer service:

• They make it their business to know their clients' business. "To this day," notes Reistad-Long, "Julian Niccolini, the co-owner of New York's Four Seasons restaurant, spends his mornings scouring, clipping, and saving newspaper articles containing information that might be relevant to his top clients' behaviors."
• They encourage repeat business with a treasured commodity—absolute discretion. "[A]t the LAB Bar in London," Jamie Gordon told her, "one of the first tenets we were taught was to never, under any circumstances whatsoever, greet a patron with even a hint of familiarity unless you were first acknowledged in said fashion."
• They don't assume their staff will know how to provide the service customers expect. Rebecca Martino, general manager of New York's One if By Land, Two if By Sea, has advised her staff to remember that many men take their girlfriends to dinner the evening before Valentine's Day, then return with their wives on the actual holiday.

The Po!nt: These establishments make themselves indispensable by adroitly anticipating and addressing their customers' needs. How can you do that for your customers?

Source: The Daily Beast. Click here for the full post.

If you're not already a MarketingProfs Pro Member, upgrade Your Membership to Pro and gain instant access to hundreds of exclusive, cutting-edge articles, case studies, templates, tools, online seminars, research and how-to guides to make your marketing smarter and more effective.

→ end article preview
Read the Full Article