Some weeks ago, slumped in front of the television after a particularly taxing day at the hospitality industry coalface, I chanced upon an early-evening repeat of Come Dine With Me – a lightweight programme in which a group of strangers score one another’s dinner-party hosting skills.
One woman was given an unusually poor rating because she had served an egg-based starter to someone who “just doesn’t like eggs”. The fact that the host knew nothing of her guest’s foodie foibles (and might have served something different if she had) seemed to play no part in the calculation.
Of course, life is full of little injustices, and if you’re daft enough to put yourself up for so-called reality TV shows, you’ll find there are quite a lot of big injustices too.
More to the point, this particular episode of mealtime mindlessness did serve to highlight one crucial business truth – if you want to win, you need to know what your customers want. Equally, it is important to understand what your customers don’t want.
The lovey-dovey couple whispering sweet nothings over the restaurant’s candle-lit corner table almost certainly don’t want repeated interruptions from a hovering waiter. The party people, hysterically high (and highly hysterical) on a heady mix of Chianti and karaoke, probably want all the attention they can get.
[At this juncture, it is perhaps appropriate to point out the vast difference between “want” and “need”. Customers generally know what they want and choose to ignore what they need. That’s why there are no cross-trainers in KFCs.]
The examples above are pretty straightforward, but bigger purchasing decisions are influenced by a much more complex web of factors, both positive and negative. With that complexity in mind, and in today’s highly-competitive commercial environment, guessing simply isn’t good enough.
If you want results, you need research.
I mean proper research. It’s not enough to leave a little card in the hotel room inviting “comments”. It’s not enough to say “Was everything all right with your meal?” It’s not enough to rely on your TripAdvisor stars or your Twitter followers – both of which are largely quantitative rather than qualitative.
Sainsbury’s Travel Insurance recently conducted a survey about UK residents’ holiday plans for 2015. The responses were split, roughly 50/50, between those who plan to go overseas, and those who plan to take a British break. A sizeable number intends to do both.
The big question is “Why?” Why are you going abroad? If you’re not, why aren’t you coming to Dorset? If you are, why do you like the place? Only then can we pose the question “How can we improve your experience, to tempt you back?”
Find out – don’t guess – what people want, and give them more of it. Find out what they don’t want, and get rid of it.
Serve eggs to someone who doesn’t like eggs, and you won’t get points, and points – in this instance – mean profits.