How to Layer Surprise and Delight For a Big Payoff (Without a Big Budget or a Big System)

Two years ago I walked into a steakhouse for my birthday and walked out with a story I apparently cannot stop telling. 

This episode is that story, and more importantly, it's layers of surprise and delight that we can take into our own businesses.  None of this costs a lot. All of it requires a decision.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• The specific moment at Fleming's Prime Steakhouse that made me realize most businesses are delivering a service when they could be designing an experience.
• Why the espresso martini my dad cried over wasn't in any SOP, and what that means for how you build your team culture.
• The one question your intake or booking flow is probably not asking, and why that missing question is costing you referrals.

If you've ever wondered why your satisfied clients aren't becoming your raving ones, press play.

Connect with Nikki on Instagram: instagram.com/iamnikkimck 

The Would Recommend Standard is a free guide to the five principles behind businesses people can't stop talking about. 

Grab it here: theopsshop.biz/wouldrecommend-standard 

A Spark Session is a 90-minute strategy session where you and Nikki dig into your client experience and figure out exactly where it's working and where it isn't. 

Book yours here: theopsshop.biz/sparksession 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This is the one I was telling you about. It is the You will not believe this play that I just found. Literally obsessed. I sent this link to literally everyone I know. Their biggest. I'm telling everybody about this. Tell them I sent this is my biggest. Girl. 10 out of 10 would recommend. Have you ever gone to a restaurant just expecting to have a good steak, yet somehow, two years later, you are still talking about that steak? This happened to me at Fleming's Prime Steakhouse in Naples, Florida. And the reason I bring this up is because the experience I had at this restaurant was honestly one of the reasons why I decided to go deep into customer experience design and why I wanted to start this podcast. So welcome to Would Recommend. I am Nikki McKnight, and this show is about the businesses that customers can't stop talking about and what they actually did to earn it. Today is another Nikki Talk solo episode because this story of customer experience has been in my head for years, and I keep talking about it, and now I just need to talk about it in an audio format. So I'm going to tell you exactly what happened at this restaurant, and then I'm going to show you how you too can bring this same vibe of experience into your business. Because when you experience something good, you just want to keep talking about it to every single person that you meet. So thank you, I guess, to the steakhouse for creating this podcast. So at Fleming's Steakhouse, this was for my birthday. And my parents typically, when I visit them in Florida, they pick the restaurant, they book a bunch of places for us to go out to. And I did what I always do. I look at the menu in advance so that I know what dessert I'm going to get and then reverse engineer what I'm going to eat. I am prepared for restaurant dining. But I, what I was not prepared for was walking into a main character birthday experience. So we arrived at Fleming's and the host walks us through their very fancy dining room to a table. And on this table was the first couple of surprises. One, there was birthday-shaped confetti on the table. And if you know me, you know that I love confetti. So birthday confetti. And then at my seat, there was a rose, also feeling pretty fancy. And there was also a silver envelope that said happy birthday, Nikki, on it. And inside was a card that had been signed by the entire staff. When our server first came to the table, they brought with them a round of sparkling wine. That was complimentary. And if you know me, you also know that I love sparkling wine. So we all got to enjoy that. We did a little bit of a cheers. It was very nice. And then the server came back again later with an analog Polaroid camera. So she had us all go group on one side of the table and had us pose for a photo with this camera. Ten minutes later, she came back with that Polaroid in a frame. So in the first 15 minutes at this restaurant, I have had a table covered in confetti. I've had a rose, a birthday card, and now we framed birthday photo. And then, of course, at the end of the meal, a dessert comes out for me and it's this beautiful kind of chocolate thing with happy birthday, Nikki, written on it in chocolate. So you could say I was feeling pretty awesome about my birthday. But here's what I want you to notice about all of these things is that none of these things were expensive. None of them required really fancy automation or a ton of magic or a ton of oversight. The confetti was preset, and I looked around the dining room and I could see that every other table that had a special occasion also had confetti on their table. So sidebar, what a really cool signal to the rest of their staff that, like, hey, people here are enjoying a special occasion. The rose was probably a bulk order they had done that day. The card was pre-signed. The Polaroid takes two seconds to take the photo and then put it into a thing. And sparkling wine, it's really easy to comp. You just literally push a button on the thing. So all of these individually, nice, but not overly impressive. But what made it impressive is the fact that all of these things were layered together on purpose. And the layering is what makes this everything. But Flemings comes back around. So flash forward to later that year in November, it is my dad's birthday. And they are going back to Flemings. But because they had a bigger group, they actually didn't book online with like open table or something, they called the restaurant and nobody had checked with them to see if it was a special occasion. So a couple hours before their dinner reservation, I FaceTimed my dad to say, Happy birthday. What are you doing for tonight? And they said they're going to Flemings. And I said, aha. I knew from previous visits that my dad, who is an espresso martini connoisseur, loved the espresso martini at Fleming's. The time that we'd been there together, I remember this very clearly, we were on our way out the door at the end of the evening. And my dad kind of stopped over at the bar and talked to the bartender and said, Hey, did you make the espresso martini? It's one of the best ones I've had my entire life. So good, right? So as soon as I find out they're going back to Flemings that night for dinner, what do I do? I called the restaurant and said, Hey, my dad is coming in for a birthday tonight. I know they're going to be bringing wine with them that is so expensive I cannot afford it. But what I can afford is one of his favorite espresso martinis. So I asked the table if they could bring one to dad when he sits down on me, little note. And they were like, of course, it shall be done. So I kind of waited on Tenderhooks the rest of the night to go, ooh, I wonder when I'm gonna get the text message from dad to say he got the espresso martini. Later that night, I get a text message from my mom, and it is a photo of the empty martini glass in the foreground with my dad in the background saying that my dad had teared up when they told him that his daughter had ordered him this espresso martini. So people, this is what we are chasing here when we think about customer experience. That moment of tearing up. So, with both of these stories, I want to use Flemings as a lens because I think the experience that I had and that my dad had through me maps onto something that I see and often don't see in founder-led businesses. And it is the difference between a business that generates satisfied clients and a business that generates raving clients. And let me tell you, the difference isn't typically in talent or quality of food in this sense. The biggest difference is intentionality. It's whether you designed the experience or if you just delivered a service. So I tend to think about customer experience as five separate principles, and Flemings has hit all five of them. So let's walk through them so that you actually have something to use. Okay, principle number one is around the flag. Flemings couldn't deliver a birthday experience if they did not know it was your birthday. So that sounds obvious, but a lot of places don't have a mechanism for capturing the information that would lead them into doing something remarkable. They're just going to deliver the service and that's it. So the question for your business is where does this flag live? And it doesn't just have to be about someone's birthday. Is there a moment in your intake process, your booking flow, your onboarding where you're asking the question that would help you generate something remarkable or an unexpected, unexpected later? So, not what are your goals, but something more human? What is this for? Is there anything we should know going in? What would make this feel like a win for you when someone is launching a podcast or a program? Are you making note of that so that you can send them a celebratory thing, right? You can't surprise someone with something that you never asked about. The flag is ultimately the signal and the infrastructure for the delight that is to follow. All right, principle number two, arrival sets the register. From the moment the host for that night flagged my reservation in the system as this is a celebratory occasion, we need to preset the table. The message is clear, right? They are ready for you, which is a much different feeling than walking to a restaurant and having just someone look up from a screen and say, Hi, do you have a reservation? So this moment of arrival, this feeling of arrival, whether it is a physical space or it's a welcome email or a call, it is going to set the register for the entire experience. It's going to tell the client what kind of story they're in. And a lot of businesses don't spend much time designing that moment. So, with you and your business, think about the first thing that your client sees or receives after they say yes. And what is it? Is it warm? Is it specific to them? Does it tell them they made the right call entrusting you with their time, money, and energy? Or does it read like a generic auto response? Designed arrival doesn't have to be elaborate and it does not require a physical space. It just has to be intentional. It can be as small as a single line that uses their name and references something specific about why they're there. And that is going to outperform a generic high insert first name. Welcome that you're here. So let's go on to the principle number three, which is about layering moments. So what made the Flemings experience land wasn't any single element, it was the accumulation. It was the confetti and the rose and the champagne and the Polaroid and the chocolate. Each one of these things is completely nice on its own, but together they're going to create a feeling. And a feeling is what creates a memory. A memory creates an opportunity for someone to share that memory. Businesses tend to design a singular signature moment and stop there, right? Like one welcome gift, one call, one did you enjoy your experience survey? But the clients who become those raving fans, those evangelists, the people who send you referrals, who leave reviews without being asked, who tell people about you when you're not in their room, they're always, almost always reacting to a series of moments, not just one. So think about your client experience from yes to done. And where are those natural touch points, right? Typically, we would think intake, kickoff, midpoint, delivery, close, and then after. Most businesses are only going to pick two of those the intake and then the done. The ones that people rave about are going to design for all of them and not with grand gestures, but with very small, consistent signals that say, we see you, we thought about you, we didn't forget about you. Now we're into principle four, which is about the human recovery part. So the espresso martini story is actually more powerful because it didn't come from a system. They weren't prepared for it. It came from a human that was paying attention, storing a detail, and then acting on it later. In your business, this is what happens when your team knows why the experience matters and not just what to do. When someone on your team hears a throwaway comment, uh, I'm nervous about this presentation, or this is going to be the first time I've done something like this, or we're going out of town next week for my anniversary, and then they file it away. When they flag it to you or act on it themselves before the fly and has to ask, that's what brings in the human recovery aspect because that espresso martini was not an NESOP. It happened because someone cared enough to take the information and act on it, which is not a system question, it's a culture question. And culture is one of the hardest things to build, but it's one of the most valuable things that you can have. Which gets us into our final principle, which is about the after. I am still talking about this restaurant. Two years later, on a podcast, this is the after. Most businesses treat the end of the engagement as the end of the relationship. The experience is done, we've delivered the thing, they've paid us, and we move on. The after is a discipline. It is what you do in 30, 60, 90 days, two years post-delivery that determines whether a client files you away as good in their mental Rolodex, or if they're going to talk about you at dinner parties or on a podcast. This can be something like it's a check-in, it's a relevant resource, it's a I saw this and I thought of you. It's not a pitch, it's just a signal that they did not disappear from your awareness the moment the work was done. Flemings didn't follow up after my birthday, but they don't have to because the in-restaur experience was strong enough to carry it. But most businesses, you're not brick and mortar. You don't have that kind of dinner table theater to fall back on. So the after is where you get to make up the difference. All right, so let's pull this all together. Five things Fleming did that you can steal. Number one, they captured the flag. They had the information to act on before I even arrived. Number two, they designed a rival. The host, the confetti, the rose, the card. I knew immediately what kind of place I was in. Number three is they layered the moments. So no single element was the whole show. It was the accumulation. I like this is the snowflake to snowball moment. Bunch of snowflakes make a snowball. You can build something with that. Number four is they built for human recovery. They things happen because someone paid attention and someone else cared enough to act on it. And finally, number five, they earned the after. Because two years later, here I am, still telling the story. None of this is flashy. And none of this, as I've described it, requires a huge budget. It just requires a decision to design the experience rather than just delivering a service. And that decision is available to every single founder who's listening right now. So to wrap us up, if you would want a framework for how to apply this to your own business, I have something for you. It's called the Would Recommend Standard, and it is a collection of five customer experience principles pulled from brands that have earned word of mouth at scale. Disney, Chewy, Eatoli, Ritz Carlton, Warby Parker. Each of the five principles I cover is going to give you a real example, a business case, and then a question that you can take into your own work. You can grab it at the link in the show notes. It's free and ready and waiting for you. And if this episode resonated with you, if you've heard something in the Fleming story that made you think about your own client experience, the best thing you can do right now is subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. It takes about 90 seconds, and it's genuinely how more founders find the show. And I will be back soon with more businesses worth talking about.