One of the highlights at the Union Square Ventures Portfolio Summit last week was having Danny Meyer speak. Danny is the founder of Union Square Hospitality Group (which includes some of the best and most enduring restaurants in New York) and the author of the must-read book “Setting the Table,” in which he describes his approach. Danny spoke about what it takes for a business to become someone’s “favorite” (as in “abc is my favorite restaurant” or “xyz is my favorite web site”). He pointed out that providing quality service (fast, reliable, etc) is just the baseline. It is what people expect these days.
To become someone’s favorite requires going beyond that into making an emotional connection. This where hospitality comes in. Hospitality is the “humanizing” element. Visitors have to feel appreciated, they have to find their time respected and they have to find pleasure in the transaction (my best attempt to recall Danny’s words, which seem to apply equally well to restaurants and web sites). Achieving that for USHG starts with hiring employees based on their HQ, their “hospitality quotient,” which Danny defined as “how much pleasure someone derives from providing pleasure to others.”
I believe that would be a great hiring criterion for web sites also, and I don’t just mean for customer support but throughout, including developers. All too often sites seem to fall short on a humanized experience which would provide an emotional connection and make a site someone’s favorite. I had not thought deeply about the reasons before Danny’s talk, but now I am convinced that it has to start with every employee’s desire to create a pleasurable experience.
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