There are no ironclad laws when it comes to customer experience but this is pretty close:

The more sexy and exciting an opportunity sounds the less important it is.

Or perhaps worded differently, the more routine, obvious or boring the aspect of the experience is, the more value it has.

A simple example:

I spent the last week staying in a posh hotel in Auckland. There was a selection of craft whiskeys and chocolate in the room — no complaints there — but there was nowhere to store clothes except for one hanger, no way of knowing what any of the nine light switches would do, and a broken thermostat that made the room unpleasantly cold.

There’s nothing especially exciting about getting these basic things right — drawers or hangers, lights that work and the ability to change the room temperature — but they matter a lot more than the artisanal chocolate bars.

My advice: while everyone else is trying to be different, clever, trendy or bleeding edge, focus instead on getting better and better at the absolute basics and most obvious sources of value for the customer. Aim to elevate the mundane to an artform.

Brilliant basics appeal to the most buyers in the most buying situations. And if you want a successful business, attracting more people more of the time ain’t a bad starting point.

See this post on LinkedIn