Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jill Guindon-Nasir, the head of Ritz Carlton’s global training division. Signature is looking at a variety of possible partnerships with Ritz Carlton. We want to revolutionize the customer experience of long term care, and who better to help us do that than the company whose very name has entered the vernacular as a synonym for elite customer service (i.e., “ritzy,” or “puttin’ on the Ritz.”)?
(For those of you who are interested in exactly how Ritz Carlton has managed to become the international gold standard in customer service, I highly recommend the book The New Gold Standard: 5 Leadership Principles for Creating a Legendary Customer Experience Courtesy of Ritz Carlton, by Joseph A. Michelli.)
One of the concerns I had prior to speaking with Jill was the vast difference between the needs and expectations of a typical Ritz Carlton guest and those of a typical Signature resident. For example, Ritz Carlton is known for giving employees an unconditional budget of up to $2,000 per day to spend on making sure that a guest is completely satisfied. Ritz folklore is full of stories about legendary feats of customer service: replacing a stolen Louis Vuitton handbag that had been an anniversary gift, flying to NYC and back to purchase a replacement for a favorite dress that had been stained, building a wooden walkway from the hotel to the beach overnight so that a disabled guest could put her feet in the surf…the kind of stories that make you go “Wow!”
Unfortunately, these are also the kind of stories that make you go “Wow…that’s expensive!” It’s one thing for a luxury resort to spend $1,200 on a leather handbag for an ultra-wealthy guest who is spending $700 per night out of pocket…it’s another thing for a skilled nursing facility to do the same (especially after that SNF just got slapped with an 11.3% across the board cut courtesy of our friends at CMS).
When I expressed this concern to Jill, she wasn’t surprised. The truth of the matter is that for the average Ritz Carlton guest, dropping $1,200 on a purse or buying a first class airline ticket at the last minute isn’t really a big deal. Ritz Carlton’s customers are the top 1% of all travelers in terms of net worth. Jill’s point was that it’s not the money that creates the “wow” factor, it’s the fact that someone actually cares enough to notice their needs and do something extraordinary to meet them.
That got me thinking about my own life experience. I’m not in the Ritz Carlton demographic, but there have been a few occasions where an organization has gone so far above and beyond my expectations that I will literally never forget their efforts.
Probably the best example was the church I recently joined. I won’t get into what denomination it is; this isn’t about proselytizing or theology. While the entire process of joining this church was incredibly moving and powerful, one moment in particular stood out. The church had organized a Saturday morning retreat for all of us newcomers. We were expecting the standard fare at such events: donuts and coffee, group exercises to learn more about each other, and presentations from the minister and lay leaders.
But when we arrived, each of us had a box with our name on it waiting at our seat. Inside each box was a stack of handwritten letters from members of the church welcoming us and sharing their experiences. There were letters from schoolchildren, filled with glorious misspellings and joyful innocence. There were letters from parents of young children, filled with warmth and comaraderie and shared experience. There letters from older people who had lost a spouse, letters from people who had lost their faith and rediscovered it, letters from people who had lost their jobs, letters from people who were struggling with addiction…the whole range of human experience was there, poured out in an expression of selfless, anonymous, unconditional love.
I lost it.
I mean, I REALLY lost it. I am not a “cryer,” but I quickly found myself fumbling with my box of letters and scrambling to find a private place where I could take it all in. Then I sat down and cried like a baby for half an hour, snot and tears pouring out of me like water.
The idea that anyone would take the time to write me such a personal, heartfelt letter…let alone people I had never even met…simply blew me away. It is one of the only times I can remember when I personally felt the shattering power of unconditional love. I still have all of those letters, and I expect I will keep them until the day I die. I have told dozens of people about my experience.
How much did it cost? No more than the pen and paper on which the letters were written. But the feeling I got–the emotional satisfaction–was priceless. No offense to Ritz Carlton, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for a monthlong stay at one of their resorts.
That is our great opportunity at Signature. The encounters we have in our facilities are so intimate, so charged with meaning and emotion, that we can literally change lives, simply by going the extra mile.