Quality is More than Window Dressing

Quality is More than Window Dressing

I’m writing this morning from the lobby of a business hotel in the Twin Cities. It’s a nice place. It’s been remodeled recently and it looks great. It’s well appointed with trendy-cool furniture, mosaic tile by the front-desk, and they’ve hung interesting, fashionable artwork all over. I’m tellin’ ya – staying here is like being in a virtual Target ad.

But I couldn’t get the water in my shower any hotter than the cool side of luke-warm, and the "premium" coffee here in the lobby is still just crappy dark-brown water served in miniscule, wimpy styrofoam cups that look like the size of cups Starbucks uses to hand out samples. When they remodeled the lobby and the rooms, they should have paid attention to the things that really matter to their guests.

It reminds me of many companies I’ve witness-ed, who spend an amount equal to the gross national revenue of a third-world country ror state-of-the-art call capturing software and call scoring tools that have all the bells and whistles money can buy. They can brag to their peers and customers about their commitment to "service" (spending money=commitment….doesn’t it?). Nevertheless, they still don’t have any idea how to use it, nor do they have a foundational commitment to quality to use it well. It’s just trendy artwork in a hotel room with luke-warm water and crappy coffee.

You know, it doesn’t matter how well you dress things up for the customer, your true commitment to quality and service will ultimately be revealed for what it is.

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Flickr photo courtesy of esotericsean has been removed by request