Apply Hospitality-Driven Thinking to Your New Venture

I just finished a new book by Stephen J. Cloobeck, “Checking In: Hospitality-Driven Thinking, Business, and You”. As a self-made entrepreneur and former chairman of Diamond Resorts International, he asserts that the five biggest companies by market value today, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, aren’t really tech, but hospitality companies.

Tech may be the tool, but hospitality – making life a little easier, more comfortable, and more enjoyable for your customer, is the winning focus.

Unfortunately, too many of the technical entrepreneurs I mentor and advise are focused on their technology, and assume that the value will be self-evident to customers. They don’t do the translation from technology to customer comfort in their marketing, and they don’t constantly check to make sure that every interaction results in a memorable customer experience.

The keys to doing this well, for tech and non-tech businesses, are highlighted in his book, and he offers the following five lessons from hospitality to all entrepreneurs:

1. Priority at every business stage on the customer. Rather than leave your customer focus at the delivery stage, and technology in the front, customer needs and expectations must be the beginning of your journey via requirements, and remembered all along the way in times of crisis and confusion, competition, growth, failure, and success.

   For example, as a potential investor, I regularly see business plans that lead with pages on the technology, and only abstractly relate to customer value and improving the total customer experience. Voice recognition and artificial intelligence are great technologies, but very few customers today can tell you how these make their life more enjoyable.

2. Commit to continuous improvement. Customer needs and expectations are changing faster than ever these days. If you can’t anticipate and pivot to match these changes, to the extent of obsoleting your own offerings, competitors will step in and customers will leave, never to return. Improve the whole customer experience, as well as the product.

   Back in 1999, Amazon patented a feature and changed their own process and on-line commerce forever: One-click purchasing, versus re-entering name, address, and credit card information for every transaction. Who knows how many real impulse buys were committed and new customers were attracted thanks to this innovation?

3. Focus on reputation over brand. Prioritizing reputation over brand means you care more about what others think of you than what you have to say about yourself. It forces you to prioritize the health of your organization from the inside out. It means you are listening to, and learning from, your customers, stakeholders, and what critics say.

   United Airlines, with a great brand name, found this out the hard way a few years ago when the airlines smashed a songwriter’s guitar and refused to reimburse him. He got even by going viral, so easy to do these days, costing shareholders perhaps $180 million.

4. Ensure total alignment of all elements of your business. With every venture now worldwide, in terms of customer base, service delivery, and supply chain, the challenge is to maintain the same customer experience, while adapting to different people, places, and events. All team members must share the same mission, vision or core values.

   This requires that you recruit the best talent, train to your best, and motivate so team members all perform at their best. Break traditional management hierarchies, and build a level of trust and responsibility at all levels.

5. Do well by doing good for others as well as yourself. Be a role model for your team in helping customers and others, to demonstrate the kind of person you want everyone to be, and create the kind of world you want to live in. Add a social value giveback, or highlight your positive impact on the environment, to increase customer delight.

Apple, for example, recently reported the use of 100% renewable energy in powering its global facilities – the first major technology company to declare and fulfill such a commitment. Google places such a premium of employee happiness, with perks and benefits, that it is regularly recognized as one of the best places to work in America.

Although these principles were derived from executive experience and success in the hospitality industry, I have easily expanded their scope to technology, and I believe these apply to every new venture. Thus I agree that in the focus on customers and employees, every entrepreneur can and should take lessons from the hospitality business.

Marty Zwilling

*** First published on Inc.com on 10/22/2018 ***

Martin Zwilling is the Founder and CEO of Startup Professionals, a company that provides services to startup founders around the world. See more details at www.startupprofessionals.com