The weighty burden of anticipating customer needs
Thursday, 24 July 2008
By Kirsty Dunphey
I travel a lot. I also like to shop. I do not however care to repeat my first international travel experience where I had to pay £250 (more than a fortune for me at the time) to get all of my luggage home after my first trip abroad.
One of my favourite bloggers Seth Godin talks about staying at a $300 a night hotel with the groovy addition of an etch-a-sketch to the room. Now as much fun as that sounds, and as much as I applaud this hotel for having some fun, I’d trade the etch-a-sketch, the mini bar, the teeny tiny shampoo, the four extra pillows, the groovy lights all controlled by the one bedside panel for one set of hotel luggage scales.
I am yet to stay in a hotel that offers a luggage scale. Instead on a recent hotel stay I was confronted with a sign telling me not to weigh my luggage on the gym scales.
Now I’m thinking, if these hotels know I’m considering lugging my oversized luggage down five levels in an elevator, across a courtyard, along the pool and up four steps to use the gym scales – why couldn’t they simply have a conveniently located luggage scale near the lobby?
Talk about knowing a customer’s needs and then blatantly ignoring them!
Whatever your business may be, listen for signs that your customers are crying out for something. My advice; don’t try and change them, look inside and find the way to say yes to your customers, instead of no, don’t or can’t.
Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: www.kirstydunphey.com
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