Impact of an Unexpected Hello

I’ve been inspired by genuine heart-felt hospitality from the first time I ate at restaurant Daniel in NYC, in 2008. My sister and I went for dinner, a couple months after meeting famed chef Daniel Boulud in Beijing at the Olympics. From the moment we walked into the restaurant that night, we felt like they were actually happy that we’d arrived, and excited to curate an experience for us that would leave memories that we’d talk about years later.?

As the CEO at Gather Campgrounds I now have the great fortune to dream up special guest moments, and delight our customers in ways they’ve never imagined. Each day, our team works to transfer energy to our guests, invoking emotions in them that hopefully make them feel wanted, seen, heard, and appreciated.?

It’s been startling to witness just how far a little intentionality can go with our guests. For example, our team personally greets every guest at the door. We wait until they approach, and when they reach about 15 feet from the entrance we open the door and welcome them with a warm smile and energetic greeting. When I say it’s startling to witness just how far this goes, I mean that our guests are often blown away, shocked, even a bit curious why someone is here to welcome them with such gratitude and joy.?

Yeah, it’s a small gesture, I know, and it’s become clear that all of these small gestures combined dramatically elevate our guest’s experience.

When’s the last time someone opened the door for you?

How did it make you feel when someone opened the door for you, welcomed you with a warm greeting as they looked you in the eye?

Some people might say this sort of action isn’t scalable, or that it costs too much, or that it doesn’t make much of a difference.

When thinking about how we serve our guests, my approach at Gather Campground is to purposely do the things that don’t scale, as these are precisely the notes that will hit most powerfully with our guests, and surely songs our competitors are not playing.

A few more examples of perhaps ‘unscalable’ actions our team carries our; delivering firewood to our guests site (sometimes even making and stoking the fire for them), helping a guest who’s new to RVing set up their RV at their site, delivering ice cream to a guest at the pool, sending hand-written thank you cards, or organizing a repair for their RV with a mobile technician.

What about the cost of doing these? Wrong. Each of these intentional moments with our guests are INVESTMENTS in our shared relationship. When we engage thoughtfully with our guests we find that both parties leave the interaction with a deposit having been made into their emotional bank. Plus, delighted guests are already beginning to make return visits, only two months into being open.

Serving guests with genuine intention and full hearts pours fuel onto both of our flames and that’s exactly the energy we want to amplify for all guests at Gather Campground. Even strangers coming to visit the property for the first time often walk into our Camp Store and mention something along the lines of ‘this place feels really good’ or ‘there’s something happening here’.

I encourage you to think about something unscalable, perhaps unusual that you and your team can do to connect with your customers. Most importantly, make it fun for your and your team and your customers will surely feel it.

If you have examples or stories about special things you do to connect with and serve your customers please share in the comments, as I’d love to learn from you!