Suitsupply's Three E's: Effectiveness, Ease, and Enjoyment in CX
Last week Peter had to buy a suit for a wedding on Thursday. And I am not sure about you, but Peter could definitely think of nicer things to do during his weekend!
But his visit to Suitsupply turned out to be a great experience that is worth sharing! What made it so great: let us explain this with the help of the Customer Need Pyramid. This model is being used by Forrester and it works with the 3E’s: Effectiveness, Ease, Emotion!
EFFECTIVE:
Peter was ‘on a mission’ to get his suit. His job to be done was to meet the strict dresscode and to look great for the wedding. And he succeeded! With fairly priced suits and the many choices that Suitsupply offers, he was not really in doubt about this one actually!
EASY:
What made it good was that the experience was completely effortless! Your name is registered the moment you walk in and a few minutes later a sales person comes to pick you up in the comfortable coffee corner. This person is your personal assistant that gives you full attention and won’t help any other customers till you have left the shop. You just have to give a short description what you are looking for and they will do all the work!
ENJOYABLE:
This is the best part: the one that makes you want to come back and share your experience with others. While waiting for help Peter could relax in the coffee area enjoying a nice cappuccino. The sales rep Lola (originally from Spain) was super friendly, gave good advice on shoes and shirts for the wedding (without pushing for additional sales). And while trying out various suits and talking about skiing, she gave some advice on a cool skiing area in Spain. And what really was a WOW-moment: as he needed to have his suit adjusted, Peter could pick it up on Wednesday. OK that’s a bit less effortless, but Lola told Peter that this was her day off and she would be happy to come to the shop to personally hand over the suit and check if it would completely fit Peter’s expectations in the end!
EFFECTIVE is what you come for
EASE is what makes you satisfied
ENJOYABLE is what makes you remember and share it
How is your company performing on the Customer Need Pyramid?
CitizenM - Blown away by the passion for their guests
Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting with Evelien van Damme and Diego Sartori. Both work in the CitizenM Support Office. Don’t be fooled, this is what most companies call their Head Office, but at CitizenM everyone serves the Ambassadors (=front line staff) who work in the hotels. Any people not directly working in their hotels work at the Support Office. And do you know what? Their CEO is actually at the bottom of this support pyramid. Revolutionary, but on the other hand so right!
For those of you who don’t know CitizenM – they are a hospitality company born out of the frustrations business travelers and weekenders experienced in more traditional hotels. You can find their mission statement below.
I was blown away by the passion both Evelien and Diego exhibit for CitizenM guests; something I honestly have never experienced before at other companies. While talking with them, they explained to me the CitizenM DNA, which comes down to their 5 core values:
- Passionate attitude
- Smart thinking
- Contemporary style
- Genuine touch
- Real Caring
At CitizenM all employees live & breathe these values. It starts during the hiring process, which they call Casting Days and has similarities with the X Factor show. CitizenM doesn’t hire people (necessarily) with a hospitality background, they hire for personality. And they use a bunch of very cool recruitment techniques to figure out someone’s personality.
- Who is Your Hero? Asking potentials to share their hero stories helps them figure out whether people are able to open up and share emotions.
- Blind Tasting. Tasting something without knowing what it is and then describing it to peers (without telling what you think it is), lets them see how people communicate
- They have potentials create a moodboard explaining what CitizenM is and isn’t, to figure out if they understand the concept and company values.
After recruitment everyone is trained in these values, they even get to experience them firsthand during their Experience Shift and Experience Stay. An Experience Shift is literally being an Ambassador for a day and shaking cocktails, preparing breakfast and doing basically anything required to give the CitizenM guests a blast of a time. The Experience Stay is when employees themselves are guests in a CitizenM hotel, so they too can experience the various parts of the customer journey and really feel what it is like to be a guest at CitizenM.
It doesn’t stop there – employees call each other out when they notice that they aren’t living up to the CitizenM values and Diego shared, that just last month during a Team Day 2 colleagues prepared a workshop to discuss which values they were living up to and on which values they needed to work.
We talked about lots more, but I wanted to share these particular items with you, because to me this makes CitizenM an outstanding CX Leader in the area of Customer Obsessed Culture. We’ll be back in a next blog to share the Factors of Influence you have as a company to create a Customer Obsessed Culture.