What Can a Baby Bird Teach Apartment Peeps

Great post over at “Feed me!” « Hoehn’s Musings –

I really have a disdain for the phrase – keep-it-simple-stupid [K.I.S.S] – not because I don’t think the concept is true, I just don’t like the saying. And, in the same respect it seems appropriate for this post. Read with that in mind.

What can a baby bird teach apartment peeps about serving the customer

The baby bird analogy that Charlie uses, as it relates to making it simple for the customer, is perfect for any industry across the world. For those of us in the apartment space, it will become more and more incumbent upon owners, executives and front line service providers to bring ease to both the leasing and living experience in 2010. That being said, much speak as of late has been dominated by words like experience marketing, engagement and entertainment. While I think those things are true and will become more embedded in the way we do business going forward – I encourage us not to forget about making it simple and don’t forget about the fundamentals.

Make sure the fundamentals come first

A few of our quests, as apartment operators, are to provide a great experience, strike true engagement and provide some emotionally loaded entertainment that provides for powerful brand association. What we have to remember is that the basics give us every opportunity to do everyone of these things and more. We don’t necessarily have to come up with a new silver bullet each and every year. Charlie, in his post, provides a insanely simple example by way of this receipt [below] from Ted’s Montana Grill. At Ted’s they split each patrons order into a total on the receipt so no attention has to be given to it on the part of the patron. It’s simple – it’s easy and in some subtle way – it’s simply remarkable.

At very least it gives us all something to think about as we move forward in 2010 –