Editorial

Ingrid Adlum Milkes

I don’t know about all of you. But I, for one, had a fantastic time in Dallas, both personally and on a professional level. No one could leave that convention hall and say that there’s “nothing to buy.” Route operators and FEC owners had plenty of choices in new equipment, merchandise, debit card systems and, yes, even RePlay looked extra shiny, healthy and ready to make you money.

On the personal side, Dallas was supposed to be a partially-subsidized anniversary trip for my husband and me. Our April 1st anniversary always falls around the time of the spring show. So I booked us into a swanky hotel that I’ve always wanted to see. (I collect hotels like some people collect stamps. I just love everything about them and The Mansion at Turtle Creek is always at the top of my travel magazine’s top 10 list.)

Now, when I go to a nice hotel, I’m full of anticipation of how great the service will be, and most of the time I leave happy. But when a hotel exceeds even my wildest dreams, that’s when I’m floored. The Mansion was pretty to look at and the room was lovely enough, but the staff went far above and beyond to make my stay special. It started with turndown.

The first night, housekeeping put the slippers and mat on the side of the bed with the phone. Now, I like to sleep near the window, so I slept on the other side of the bed. The next night, they NOTICED that and switched my slippers around! They left lens cleaners next to my computer, cord holders near my phone and offered the hotel car to drive me to the convention center. None of these things were expensive to the hotel or even hard to think of. But it’s that little extra mile that made me so impressed, I wrote a letter to the hotel manager thanking her and her staff for the little kindnesses.

At the F2FEC conference in February, Peter Shankman, a well-known motivational speaker on customer service, said: “You don’t have to be awesome, you just need to be a little better than everyone else.” My trip to Dallas cemented that fact and now I’m motivated to try this rule at work. What can RePlay do to make your life a little better? Let us know and we’ll do our best to make it happen, slippers and all.

– Ingrid Adlum Milkes