In life, as in business, often the “little things” have an outsized impact. Yet they’re often the least recognised, the least appreciated, and the least rewarded.
Sadly, there’s often not much glory in the little things. You’re very unlikely to appear live on Bloomberg or CNBC talking about the little things your company does. Those opportunities are reserved for the big takeovers, the closing of a huge factory, or announcing your stock exchange listing.
But probably there is more value inside your business based on so-called little things than in a lot of the big things your business does. And the best news of all is that those little things generally cost nothing, but deliver an exponential RoI.
So, because nobody has this stuff on a spreadsheet or a KPI dashboard, all these high-RoI activities are undervalued. More likely than not, sooner or later, one of the more AI-powered members of the board will stop doing it altogether.
You know this sort of person. They’re fond of saying things like “what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed”. But they take it too far and believe this means if you can’t measure something, you shouldn’t be doing it at all.
I take a different tack.
If something costs you little or nothing, but might…even just at the margins…improve your customers’ or employees’ lives a little and make them feel better about their day, then why not do it anyway?
If it costs nothing and there’s an upside, it’ll be the biggest RoI project you’ll do in the next 10 years. And if there isn’t an upside, it didn’t cost you anything in the first place, so you’re not out of pocket.
Some people find this concept hard – not you, obviously, dear reader. But you’ll know people who can’t compute this information. So here are three little examples of what I’m talking about to help you get them started.
1 – Look ’em in the eye
Paul Craven told a great story about a very neat way to get a big bump in customer ratings on an episode of Christian Hunt‘s excellent Human Risk podcast.
The owner of a casino in the US implemented a rule staff had to greet guests using an approach they called “eye, hi, bye”.
What it boiled down to was this.
If a guest walked in and passed within 10 feet a member of staff, they were supposed to look the guest in the eye, say a warm “hi”, and welcome them to the establishment. And if a guest walked within 10 feel of a staff member on the way out, the staff member would also look them in the eye, say and equally warm “goodbye”, and thank them for visiting.
Now, we’ve all had terrible customer service experiences where we get ignored by all the customer service staff, haven’t we?
All things being equal, would I choose to stay somewhere that acknowledged me as a human rather than somewhere which made me feel like an inconvenience to the smooth running of their lives?
I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’d prefer option one. In fact, this casino bumped up its customer service satisfaction by 40% by implementing this approach. Nothing else was changed inside the business at the same time, so they could be sure of its impact.
Remember, the cost of doing this is zero – you’re already paying your staff anyway.
And it costs nothing to train your staff to follow this approach either. Everyone is capable of understanding those simple instructions and carrying them out.
So for a “little thing”, this has an exponential RoI. I’d be staggered if implementing a CRM system improved your customer satisfaction by 40%, but even if it did, that would cost you millions, whereas looking someone in the eye and saying “hi” costs nothing.
No question – the RoI on this “little thing” is vastly higher than any other investment you could make in your customer service.
2 – “Welcome back, madam!”
Another hospitality example – and I’m afraid the source is a little vague as I heard this story many years ago – however I seem to remember it was something Ritz-Carlton did.
Here’s how it worked.
When a guest drove up to the front of the hotel, the doorman would help the guest unload their luggage from their car or their taxi and ask, in conversation, “is this the first time you’ve stayed with us?”.
As the doorman walked the guest towards the reception desk, he would have a pre-arranged signal with the receptionist to let them know whether or not this was a returning guest. Something imperceptible that a guest wouldn’t see the doorman walking behind them with their luggage do.
Naturally, the first words out of the receptionist’s mouth when the guest arrived at check-in were “welcome back, madam”.
This is a simple system, requires no multi-million dollar CRM system, and helps make guests feel welcomed and appreciated.
Again, this costs nothing, requires next-to-no training, and if it makes even a few guests feel more likely to use your hotel next time they’re in town, then the RoI is exponential against a base cost of zero.
3 – …One more time
Music provides so many great examples of this. Artists and producers drop little things into a record that most people wouldn’t notice on a conscious level, but which somehow help the song hit the mark even better than it would do otherwise.
My favourite example is on Britney Spears’ breakthrough hit “…Baby One More Time”.
Very few people notice this because you need to be listening through pretty high-quality headphones to spot it, and have very good hearing as it’s all-but-hidden, but there’s a triangle on that track (or at least a triangle-like sound, it might come from a keyboard as it’s a very “flat” sound without the natural reverberation of a triangle).
It plays just a single occasional note, and it’s buried deep in the mix, so it’s hard to spot. But once you spot it, you can’t help but notice it. (It’s easiest to spot around 0:04 and 0:24 if you want to try to find it. Once you get the sound in your head, you’ll see it popping up in other places too.)
The sole purpose of that triangle is to add a little extra “sparkle” to the song at the right places. It’s not even designed to be heard consciously. But it works with your subconscious to help you feel a “lift” every now and again as you listen to the song.
“…Baby One More Time” was written by one of the biggest-selling songwriters of the last 30 years or so, Max Martin, who also produced it along with Rami and Denniz Pop, Max Martin’s mentor and the founder of the legendary Cheiron Studios in Stockholm.
Frankly, any one of those music industry geniuses could have decided to drop that triangle sound into the song. They’re an astonishingly talented group of people.
And while many, many other factors contributed to the success of “…Baby One More Time”, it went to Number One in 20 countries and is one of the best-selling singles of all time, with over 10 million copies sold.
Would it have been such a big hit without that triangle playing with your subconscious? Well, I don’t know. But for a cost of pretty much zero, if that triangle helped to sell gazillions of records, even in the margins, what’s the harm?
Now, odds are you aren’t in the casino business, the hotel business, or the record industry. So what does all this mean to you?
It’s this.
Your business will be better if you think about the little things as well as the big things.
The big things often get all the glory, but they don’t necessarily make as much difference as the little things.
I’m sure Apple employ some of the most talented IT people in the world, but I’ve heard easily 100x more people talk about the quality of Apple’s packaging and their experience of opening it, than I’ve heard talk about the brilliance of Apple’s coding or the technology behind their microchips.
And if you can get 100x the number of people talking positively about their experience of dealing with your business than you have now – especially when it costs nothing to add that “little thing” to what you would have done anyway – then take the plunge.
You have nothing to lose and potentially a huge RoI to gain!
This article first appeared on LinkedIn.