Should hotels charge for Internet in their rooms? Should airlines charge to check your luggage – when travel by its very nature necessitates taking something to carry your stuff in! Should you have to pay to redeem your frequent flyer points — you gave them your business, now you get charged for your loyalty to access the freebees!
In a recent article titled “Avoiding 10 worst travel rip-offs” they spoke about these three and seven more. The bottom line – if companies charge you for these services — do business elsewhere! And you can. As an avid business and personal traveller who spends lots of time on the road every year, these fees impact my decision making and I do look elsewhere.
It is difficult for companies struggling to increase profitability in these challenging economic times, but I wonder if they have, or regularly, look at the cost-benefit-analysis on the customer experience/loyalty of these decisions. When you add that $14.95 internet charge per day, or the $25 per piece of luggage how many customers is it costing you? If you don’t know, you may want to stop and think about this relative to the competition.
Customer loyalty programs are a dime a dozen, and more and more campaigns are now looking to the ‘immediacy’ and ‘no strings attached’ R.O.L. (return on loyalty) for redemption. At the end of the day, the customer will make the decision – is your company ready for it.
If you are charging ancillary fees, you may be thinking with an expense mentality. “If I charge more, I cover my costs, make more money, I am more profitable ” … but what about the customer who is not happy with the fees and all those that you have lost. Instead, what if you thought about the full customer lifecycle, your competitive positioning, and said “If I have to incur these costs, how can I make them an investment and get a positive return?” This is a shift in thinking and one that could benefit your customers – hence your company today! Time to look in the mirror. The customer is changing – so must we.
