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It is, indeed, the little things that matter
My wife, Joan, like all proud Scots, always has a saying for every situation. One of her favorites is, “Many a mickle makes a muckle,” by which she means that a lot of little things can add up to a big thing.
When markets are uncertain and costs come under the microscope, a CFO will take note of a big expense for a small detail and think: “Hah. That’s such a trivial item that our customers won’t even notice it’s gone – but it will save us thousands of dollars a year.”
And in many cases, the CFO is right. One of my favorite airline tales is about Bob Crandall, the legendarily irascible former CEO of American Airlines. One day, Bob was sitting near the front of one of their flights, intently monitoring the used meal trays that the flight attendants brought back to the galley. The minute he got off the aircraft in Dallas, Bob called the head of in-flight catering and demanded to know how much the airline spent each year on black olives. It took the poor man several minutes to come up with an estimate: about $100,000.
“Well, then,” Bob exclaimed, “I’ve just saved us a lot of money. Nobody’s eating the things. So take them off our menus!” But when you’re cutting costs, you have to be careful to protect your business’s signature details, which differentiate your company from the competition.
We have a similar story at Virgin Atlantic about ice-cream bars on our flights, which we always hand out midway through daytime flights. But our decision yielded a different result. We knew that our passengers liked them, but we had no idea how beloved this seemingly insignificant item was until one day when we stopped giving them out, to save money.
There was an uproar. I got phone calls and letters from angry customers saying that they were shocked at the decision to “take away our ice creams.” I’ll never forget one particular letter writer who said in his note: “If you want to be like all the others, then go right ahead, but you should know that it’s little touches like this that make your airline different.”
How could I argue with that? We reintroduced them right away, and our customers are still eating ice cream to this day. There is another, more subtle effect of cost-cutting, when managers anxious about budgets restrict – deliberately or not – front-line employees’ ability to make decisions about customer service. This will prevent them from connecting with your customers in a warm and caring way, and from engaging in spontaneous acts of kindness.
David Tait, who ran Virgin Atlantic for many years, took me by surprise recently when he related what he described as the “most memorable and quite unprecedented customer service moment” he’d ever experienced. A few days before, he was talking with an associate in the lobby of the Hyatt Place Hotel in Utica, Michigan. A member of the staff who happened to be walking by asked if everything was satisfactory and could she offer them a cup of coffee or tea.
David is borderline obsessive about customer service, yet that employee’s impromptu offer made a lasting impression on him. And to the hotel’s credit, they have fostered an environment where employees are comfortable making decisions on their own, rather than following a strict routine and instructions such as, “Your job is to sell coffee, not to give it away. If they want it, then direct them to the cafe.” This is the level of service that will truly make your company stand out – and it doesn’t cost anything at all.
This culture of making an extra effort should start at the top. When I am in London for a few days, I usually ask Virgin Atlantic staff to give me the names and arrival times of a few business class passengers flying into Heathrow. We supply them with free limos to and from the airport, so I call the limousine. Usually when I say, “Hi, this is Richard Branson,” I get a warm reception – though one New Yorker retorted, “Yeah, right, and I’m the Dalai Lama. Who is this?”
Once we get the introductions out of the way, I ask how the flight went and if there was anything we could have done better. It only takes a few minutes for me to make these calls, and the impression they create seems to unanimously positive, particularly if the customer had a problem that I could help resolve. Â
So rather than cutting costs, maybe it’s time to take a look at reverse-engineering your business. Instead of stripping out the costly little touches in the hope that your customers won’t notice, try working on building in as many of these little extras as you can, so that they will be surprised and delighted – and they’ll keep coming back.
Richard Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group. Send questions to
[email protected].
