If you can’t deliver results for people, you don’t really have a business. So, before you do anything else, that’s where your focus should go…
But once your During Unit delivers results your customers want… The next thing you focus on is looking for opportunities that will add to your bottom line. I call those “strategic outcomes."
Here’s what I mean…
Let’s say you own a restaurant. Here, your During Unit starts the moment somebody comes into the restaurant and ends when they leave.
A typical restaurant experience goes like this: Somebody arrives. They get seated. The waiter takes their order. The food gets prepared. The food comes out. They enjoy their meal. They have dessert or drinks or coffee or nothing. They pay, and then they leave.
When you look at that timeline, you notice there’s several metrics you can measure and improve. And one of those metrics is your average ticket per dinner…
If, right now, you have 100 people come in and they spend, on average, $30 per guest… that would mean that at the end of the day you’d generate $3000. That’s your benchmark.
The way you can improve this benchmark is to find all the opportunities on your guest experience map where you can offer additional things…
For example, you could add a little 10 or 12-second interaction while your guests wait for the food to arrive…
You could welcome them and say, “Welcome to our restaurant. You can join our birthday club today and you can celebrate it tonight with a special birthday cake. After that you get a $20 gift card on your birthday. Here’s the card to sign up…"
You can join our birthday club today and you can celebrate it tonight with a special birthday cake.
If you did that to 100 people, you’d end up with a number of contacts greater than zero you could add to your email list. You’d still have 100 people come in… they’d still each spend $30… and you’d still have $3000 at the end of the night…
But in addition to that, you’d also have 30, 40, or 50 people who've left their contact details. You’d now know who they are. And you’d be able to contact them on a regular basis. Which means, you’d have a growing contact database which, over time, would become a valuable asset to you...
This is just one example of what you could do. There are many more opportunities hidden in your During Unit experience that could increase your strategic outcomes. And you don’t have to be in the restaurant business either…
Because no matter what business you’re in, when you look at your During Unit as if you were your customer… when you put yourself in their shoes and pay attention to the experience…
You find several opportunities to add value... and increase your bottom line at the same time.