The Weighty Burden Of Anticipating Customer Needs

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 pounds (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 5 levels in an elevator, across a courtyard, along the pool and up 4 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.

Word Count - 269

Copyright/Reprint Info - The contents of this article written by Kirsty may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the author's name and contact information are included as below.

Kirsty Dunphey is an author, speaker and entrepreneur who started her first business at 15, opened her own real estate agency at 21 and retired a self made multi-millionaire at 27. To sign up to Kirsty Dunphey's weekly email, go to www.kirstydunphey.com