Please enjoy your stay Mr. Colt

I know it is much more fashionable to blog about or chat up bad experiences you have with people or companies because they are usually more interesting etc but I had such a great experience the other day with of all places a Hotel that I have not stopped telling anyone who will listen...and the people who I am traveling with are getting tired of hearing about it.

So here is the deal. Last Sunday I flew into Boston with two other people from FreshBooks and when we got to the Colonnade Hotel the first thing I heard was...

"Hello Mr. Colt, Hello Mr. Shah, I hope you had a nice flight"

This little touch was incredible because our greeting didn't come from the check in people but rather the doorman. Ya see, as he was taking out our luggage from the taxi he looked at our luggage tags and addressed us personally.

This was enough to really impress me because I spend a bunch of time thinking up new ways to let our customers know they are special and this person made me feel like POTUS or something equally important.

Now the story could easily end here and I would have an incredible feeling about this hotel and would recommend it to anyone I knew who was going to Boston but something else happened to make me a voracious evangelist for the Colonnade Hotel.

Wanna know what it was?

Well a full 24 hours later I saw Norman (the doorman) again and without hesitation he addressed me by name and told me if there was anything he could help me with to make my stay better I should let him know.

Our previous encounter was maybe 3 minutes long at the most and he still remembered my name. This experience was so amazing that I was moved to not only write this post but I also wrote a letter to the hotel manager letting them know what a treasure they had at the front of the building....and for the record I have never written a letter like this to anyone.

I hope this shows that when your employees are customer facing it doesn't matter if they are your most senior person or your most junior, everyone is key to making people love you...and I love Norman!

...just not in a creepy way!