Dave Morin

So, it appears that I tend to blog a little bit more on the road than when I’m home in the “valley.” This is probably because I tend to pay a lot of attention to marketing, customer experience, and business tactics associated with travelers. I also used to work at a five star hotel as a concierge. So, that’s probably got something to do with it as well.

I’ve been traveling this trip with my partner in crime, Kelly Davis. Once upon a time she was going to guest blog for me. Kelly, my readers are still waiting for one of your rants.

Anyway.

Ok, so I tend to stray off topic here and there, but here it is. Last night we checked into our hotel, downtown Chicago on Michegan Ave. I’ve stayed at this particular hotel a couple times when attending meetings at my company’s offices here. I seem to remember the internet working fine. This time, I was given an “access code” for the “DSL” in my room. Once I got upstairs, I plugged in my machine, attempted to connect. No dice. Blank screen.

“That’s funny.”

Nowhere to enter my code. Nothing. So, I call the front desk. She gives me a number for technical support. They run me down adding a proxy server, trying static IP addresses, releasing and renewing my IP address from their DHCP servers among multiple other things.

If all of this sounds foreign to you. That’s because it is, and it should be. No general customer, business traveler, or my mother should have to understand or know what any of these terms mean.

Which, brings me to my point. All of this was done in order to charge customers for internet in a hotel room that already costs well over $100. Internet access costs are a minute fraction of what they used to be. Doesn’t offering free internet access in your hotel add massive value to a customer’s stay? Isn’t this just an amentiy that should simply exist in most classy hotels everywhere?

I spent 25 minutes trying to get this working. I know computers. I work for a computer company. The bottom line is, I shouldn’t have had to. Nor should anyone else.

Give your customers the amenties they deserve. Don’t charge them for something that costs you virtually nothing to provide.

I’ll stay across the street at the Omni next time.

Cool, new, innovative, and inspiring web 2.0 sites are popping up all over the web right now. The valley is buzzing, a lot of my tech oriented friends are buzzing, and if you read any VC blogs, they are buzzing too. We could be entering into an interesting time. Perhaps “dot com part two”, seems to be the specultion. Whatever might happen, I think we’ll begin to see some really great ways to take your digital lifestyle to the web in fun new ways.

Here’s the coolest one I’ve run into today:

http://43things.com

(The bigger question is why Amazon is funding this little startup almost completely, and what they want to do with the information)

Why can’t my wireless phone have two SIM cards in it? One for personal. One for work. I envision a phone a lot like my favorite phone of all time, the Sony Ericson T610. Only slightly different. This phone would have two seperate slots, and operate on both GSM frequencies. You’d be able to put your work SIM in it for Cingular’s network and your personal SIM in it for TMobile’s network. When the phone rings it would tell me both which line is calling and who’s calling me.

I know something similar to this might work in Europe, only you can put two numbers on one SIM. I’m throwing this post up without much research, because a quick goolge search returned nothing of relevance. This to me says there is a massive gap in the marketplace. All of my co-workers carry two phones. I don’t think they should have to.

Head over to my collegue Steve Cooley’s blog, where he makes an absolutely excellent point on why the blog phenomenon has taken off. People like stories. People like stories with correct information even more. I think this trend (blogging) will continue, and traditional media will finally be forced to start telling whole truth (without unrational bias) rather than just what they want to tell us.

I think he’s right.

I love great hotels. Why? Because from the moment you set foot in one, it is a non-stop entourage of doing all of the “little things” right. Here at the Davenport in Spokane, Washington it starts with a flower shop. From the moment you walk through the sliding glass doors, your senses are greeted with a near perfect aroma. The flower shop that they have integrated into the lobby near the front desk permeates the entire first floor.

The next thing that usually seperates a “great” hotel from a “nice” hotel is the elevator. When you leave the front desk of a great hotel, the elevator door is open. You don’t have to press a button, you don’t have to wait, you just walk directly in and head to your room. This is chiefly a trait of only the best hotels. And, it’s absolutely brilliant, unexpected, and absolutely charming.

I think organizations can learn a lot from this attention to detail. Sometimes the little things are the most important. People love the little things so much, they don’t even realize they are missing them until someone leaves that elevator door open for them. Even after they walk into the experience, it’s so subtle they aren’t yet sure they are a part of it. Then, a hotel like this keeps delivering. Turn-down service with bathrobes, a typed letter under the door telling you that it is daylight savings, rearranging your bathroom supplies cleanly on top of a towel. It’s a recognition of the need for attention to detail, then executing it.

What if every organization paid this much attention to customers? There’s a reason these hotels bring people back. Many of them are in completely random locations. The Davenport in Spokane, The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. But people come back, they pay a premium and love every minute of it. Then they tell their friends (and write in their blogs about it).

What if you (and all of your people) took to a whiteboard and wrote down every great “little thing” associated with your business or product? What if you took 25% of those things up a notch this quarter? What if you innovated 50% next? People would notice.

Trust me.