I heard a story once about an airline that found it was losing customers to a rival airline because the rival airline had an additional sausage in their breakfast. I don't know if it's true or not, but I can well believe it. When customers can make a choice, they can be incredible fickle.
However, is it always best to go to this level of detail with a customer during a project, it's not always clear, particularly when you're trying to work out what your customer's customer will want. I guess the answer is: Sometimes. The problem is knowing when that "Sometimes" actually is. I've just witnessed this whilst on holiday and I'm struggling to understand how it could have been missed when they got so much else right.
My family and I stayed in a family all inclusive resort - lots of kids of all ages. Very child friendly, ramps for prams everywhere, kiddie friendly pools, kids-clubs, soft drinks on tap, etc, etc. The whole place was geared up to accomodate families. Except in one fundamental area: The toilets, the male toilets to be precise.
In a male toilet, we men know that there will always be lots of urinals and just a couple of cubicals or stalls. These toilets were no different. The problem though was that all the urinals were at an adult male height, none could be used by children. So, the children had to use the cubicals. This led to frequent queues whilst the urinals stood empty. On top of that in one particular toilet, only one cubical was working, compounding the problem. Wouldn't you have thought that child-friendly urinals and wash-basins would have been a no-brainer. Apparently not.
It didn't affect the whole holiday, but we did have a few anxious moments as we waited for a cubicle to come free, naturally children never tend to know they need to pee before they *really* need to pee. In future though, and this is where I'm the fickle customer, I'd be very much influenced in to choosing a resort that had child friendly toilets over the resort we've just been to even if it cost more money.
Essentially they've potentially lost a customer because of one stupid little thing. They could have solved the problem by putting some steps in front of some of the urinals, but they've not even done that, I can't believe I'm the first to complain, or maybe I am...
However, is it always best to go to this level of detail with a customer during a project, it's not always clear, particularly when you're trying to work out what your customer's customer will want. I guess the answer is: Sometimes. The problem is knowing when that "Sometimes" actually is. I've just witnessed this whilst on holiday and I'm struggling to understand how it could have been missed when they got so much else right.
My family and I stayed in a family all inclusive resort - lots of kids of all ages. Very child friendly, ramps for prams everywhere, kiddie friendly pools, kids-clubs, soft drinks on tap, etc, etc. The whole place was geared up to accomodate families. Except in one fundamental area: The toilets, the male toilets to be precise.
In a male toilet, we men know that there will always be lots of urinals and just a couple of cubicals or stalls. These toilets were no different. The problem though was that all the urinals were at an adult male height, none could be used by children. So, the children had to use the cubicals. This led to frequent queues whilst the urinals stood empty. On top of that in one particular toilet, only one cubical was working, compounding the problem. Wouldn't you have thought that child-friendly urinals and wash-basins would have been a no-brainer. Apparently not.
It didn't affect the whole holiday, but we did have a few anxious moments as we waited for a cubicle to come free, naturally children never tend to know they need to pee before they *really* need to pee. In future though, and this is where I'm the fickle customer, I'd be very much influenced in to choosing a resort that had child friendly toilets over the resort we've just been to even if it cost more money.
Essentially they've potentially lost a customer because of one stupid little thing. They could have solved the problem by putting some steps in front of some of the urinals, but they've not even done that, I can't believe I'm the first to complain, or maybe I am...
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