I received a voice mail on November 12th from a good friend of mine, Shawn.  He had just checked in to the Edmonton Marriott at River Cree Resort in Alberta, Canada.  Here’s a portion of the message transcript:

[begin message]  I walked in the front door of the Edmonton Marriott and the desk clerk, named Rizwan, looked at me and said, “Welcome back sir.  It’s good to see you.”

I said to him, “You know, a little thing like that is just amazing to me given the hundreds—or even thousands—of people you see at this hotel.”

I haven’t been here in around 2 months but it just makes it so nice and it’s funny because next week I come back here and I haven’t booked my hotel and that just solidified it.  I said to him, “I’ll be staying with you again next week.”

That one little thing—just the gesture of remembering my face—was genuinely impressive to me.  This was a great case where, guess what, they just got my business for another trip—in reality, for several trips in the future.  And they’re not even the cheapest by the way.  It would be significantly cheaper at some other hotels.  It’s just that important. [end message]

This is great illustration of how the front line guest contact employee—in this case, Rizwan—can make a huge difference in the experience of the guest as well as the profitability of the hotel.

Some employees have a penchant for delivering service heroics that become the subjects of many positive customer testimonials and even company lore.  This is an effective way for these employees to express their uniqueness while making it memorable for customers.

For our tenth year wedding aniversary, I bought my wife an anniversary ring from Tiffany & Co.  We had planned to stay at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, about an hour and a half from our home in southeast Denver, and I had made arrangements for the ring to be shipped to the hotel from the Denver location of Tiffany.

Well, as it happened, Denver was hit by a major snowstorm the morning of our anniversary and we chose to cancel our plans to drive down to Colorado Springs.  Meanwhile, the ring had already been shipped and was in the process of being delivered to the hotel by United Parcel Service.

I contacted the Tiffany store in the Cherry Creek Shopping Center with my dilemma and my salesperson assured me that she would take care of it.  What happened next was legendary.  The store arranged for one of its security guards to drive two hours south of the store to Colorado Springs where he located the UPS truck transporting the ring, provided the paperwork necessary to claim the package, and then drove the ring another hour and a half to my house.

He arrived around 9:00 pm and would not even accept a gratuity for his extra effort.  Of course, I wrote Tiffany’s president in New York City about the service heroics and committed to “never purchase a significant piece of jewelry from a jeweler other than Tiffany and Co.”  He wrote back in acknowledgment of my letter—and in appreciation of my loyalty.

I’ve heard similar testimonials from others when presenting customer service training around the country.  Without exception, the one element that each of these stories has in common is the customers’ unconditional loyalty to the company involved.  There’s no coupon or incentive program out there that’s strong enough to lure these customers—and their future spending—away.