This is my last blog post for 2018 as I hunker down in the homestretch of writing a book about Airbnb which will be published by McGraw-Hill in 2019.As I’ve been working with Airbnb, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to focus on customer experience delivery in the context of the burgeoning sharing economy.While there are vast differences between guest experience excellence at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company (the focus of my book The New Gold Standard ) and what is needed to create a memorable stay by a host listing an A-frame Rustic Off-Grid Cabin on Airbnb, there are more similarities than one might think.
One of the greatest customer experience common denominators is the pursuit of convenience.
Increasingly The Ritz-Carlton, Airbnb, and
your brand must strive to deliverexperiences which make the lives of customers easier. My buddy Shep Hyken recently released a brilliant book titled
The Convenience Revolution in which he observes:“Convenience is relevant to your business, no matter what your business happens to be…. It would be a strategic catastrophe to assume you are ‘convenient enough’ for your customer, and it’s a potentially huge marketplace advantage to make what you offer the customer a little more convenient.”This week Kevin Johnson the CEO of Starbucks (a company I have written two customer experience books about,
The Starbucks Experience and
Leading the Starbucks Way) announced how Starbucks will be expanding service delivery through a partnership with the sharing economy company, Uber.Earlier in the year, Starbucks teamed up with Uber Eats in Tokyo and Miami to try Starbucks Delivery. Kevin announced that approximately 25% of US stores will roll-out the program in 2019.When it wasn’t convenient enough to wait in line to order and pay, Starbucks went to mobile ordering. Now that it’s not convenient enough to pop-in and grab your pre-purchased drink, how about having the Uber Eats driver hand it to you where you are?
As you enjoy the convenience of some time off over the holidays, don’t forget to plan your convenience delivery in 2019.
We are here to have a chat at your convenience in the new year, as you
take your customer experience to the next level. Simply
send us an email and we’ll order-up a call delivered to a phone near you.Merry Christmas and a happy start to 2019.
