Don't hate me because I'm a mystery shopper. Sometimes people do, when they learn that I have the lovely gig of professionally shopping companies secretly to assess their level of customer service. This can find me undercover (and here's where the getting-hated-on part comes in) at a Five Star hotel; or at a world-class restaurant, where I’m obliged to eat course after lovely course and critique the customer service while I’m partaking; or even at a boutique spa, where I'll essentially be getting paid to have a massage or a pedicure or a facial–keeping mental notes all the while so I can critique the customer experience later on.
This is part of my broader practice as a customer service consultant and customer experience advisor. As such, I typically assess the quality/current state of a company’s customer experience ahead of the start of a customer service initiative, via such mystery shopping. Later, we’ll use these impressions that I’ve gathered as the baseline to improve upon during the transformational customer service initiative part of the engagement.
Unlike most mystery shopping expeditions, mine don’t focus on checklist-friendly items: how many seconds until I’m greeted, how many times employees use my name, and so forth. While I certainly am interested in speed and friendliness, I don’t believe a checklist approach is enough to capture the “gestalt” of what makes a customer service experience truly world-class and what can turn it into an also-ran. Rather, I invest much of my observational effort into the less-quantifiable aspects of what makes a customer experience great.
A Seabourn Cruise Line executive chef shops at a port of call with his passengers (Photo Credit:... [+]
The importance local authenticity, aka ”terroir”
Today, I want to talk about one of those subtle items that can transform the power of the customer service and customer experience you’re providing. I call it “terroir,” after the French term for everything that goes into a wine or a piece of produce, particularly everything that is unique about the specific locale. The desire for “terroir,” for a feeling of what makes a business locally authentic, is an important theme among what customers want today.
You have to venture onto the high seas to experience one of the best purveyors of terroir (localized authenticity) in a luxury environment: Seabourn Cruise Line. (This may seem ironic, considering that the term “terroir” is close in origin to “terre,” which means “earth,” but since a typical Seabourn cruise will visit a different earthbound port every day, stick with me; this will make sense in a moment.)
At each port of call where Seabourn's ultra-luxury cruise ships dock, a concerted attempt is made to orient passengers (whom Seabourn calls “guests”) to what is unique about this locale while they’re still on board. At most ports, this is accomplished by having a local destination expert board the ship for two to three hours in the morning, offering information and ideas for what to do there offshore.
A “Shopping with the Chef” excursion into town offers another unique, localized opportunity. Here, passengers accompany the onboard executive chef to local markets in a particular town, where they buy fresh local ingredients to be prepared on the ship later that day. Seabourn’s sommeliers go in search of local wines at ports of call in notable wine regions to bring back something special to pair with an evening’s meal, bringing back insights and anecdotes they gathered ashore to share with the guests as well.
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Moving back ashore, I’m a fan of a lovely Jacksonville, Florida-area resort property, Ponte Vedra Inn & Club. It's an instructive example of what terroir, localization, is all about, and the addition it can make to your value proposition with customers today. Ponte Vedra Resorts, which include their Inn and Club, is a lovely Five Diamond property with all the luxury trimmings you’d expect: 24-hour room service; employees who are attentive and who use the guest’s name, almost uncannily; nobody telling guests “no problem” or “no worries.” (I write more about the importance of using the right phrases in customer service–and avoiding the wrong ones here.)
Ponte Vedra Inn & Club, Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida (Near Jacksonville)
The other reason, though, that this resort is special is that you feel like you have actually arrived somewhere when you get here. You can feel right away that you’ve stepped out of the generic landscape of the endless chain hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that assault your vision right up until you pull into the property. The windows open so you can hear the water. The beachy though refined interiors of the guest rooms imply kinship to the exterior landscape, which is lovingly landscaped in a locally appropriate fashion. And the enthusiasm of the staff for what makes their property locally authentic and unique helps brings this all home.
A long-tenured waiter, Micah Simpson (no relation; his similar name is just a lovely coincidence) became Ponte Vedra for me when I came under his care at the Seahorse Grille, the resorts’ signature restaurant, where he embodied how localized and personal the world here could be for a guest. (Certainly, the stunning floor to ceiling views of the crashing Atlantic coastline helped, as did the often locally sourced menu and well-thought-out furnishings and décor.) Simpson knew the ins and outs of the often locally sourced menu, insisting we try, for example, the Mayport shrimp, going so far as to remove the heads for my squeamish guest who wasn’t down with having those unseeing little eyes aimed her way. “For most of my guests,” this other Micah tells me, “a visit here is an event. And the kind of event guests want today is something authentic, something they can’t get anywhere else. That’s what I try to give them. I start with a baseline of what we are able to offer here that is locally special, and then, working with the particular guest in front of me, adapt that to suit what I feel will make them especially happy in a personalized way.”
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One unique way that a business can exude authenticity is via its connection to an era, rather than a location. One of the grand examples of this that you should check out next time you're in midtown New York is The Algonquin, arguably the longest-standing hotel in continuous operation in Manhattan. Its authentic connection, however, isn't to longevity per se but to a specific moment in time: the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, where the great wits of the time (1919-1929) gathered, dubbing themselves "the vicious circle." Yes, there was an actual round table, and, yes, it's still at the Algonquin, and available for dinner or drinks if your party is large enough. The hotel has a stunning painting now behind the table memorializing its members (all-around wit Dorothy Parker, New Yorker editor Harold Ross, author Robert Benchley, etc.) and the painting is also reproduced on every guest keycard.
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Your business interests may not lie in hospitality or fine dining, and it’s even less likely that your business operates on the high seas. But there are ways for most every type of business to make a localized connection with customers. And there are nearly as many opportunities to turn off customers through what they perceive as inauthenticity. If you’re looking for inspiration for how to achieve the former and avoid the latter, here are two more articles from me that may provide it, one that takes place in Hawaii and one that takes place in India.
