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I’m a 7th-generation entrepreneur, the New York Times best-selling author of 7 books, and the founder of five multi-million-dollar businesses.
I’m a business growth and customer experience expert and researcher. I’ve advised more than 700 companies, including 40 FORTUNE 500 brands.
I’m an inductee into the professional speaking hall of fame, and twice named a Global Guru in marketing, and customer experience.
I’m also one of the world’s most popular tequila influencers.
For details on how to hire me as a speaker, consultant, content creator, researcher, or tequila guide, please visit:
JayBaer.com Feedback and questions always welcomed at Jay@JayBaer.com (yes that’s my real email)
Speed has always been important. The very first Olympic event in 776 BC was a footrace…a contest of speed.
The premise of speed as a competitive advantage has been with me for a long time. Now, I’ve undertaken my deepest dive yet.
I recently launched a comprehensive, proprietary research study to measure the relationship between responsiveness and revenue.
Get the study at TheTimeToWin.com
The key finding: We care about time (and how we spend it) more than ever.
And that’s why, instead of writing a fulllength book that asks you to devote five or more hours to it, I’ve created this concise mini-book.
Through my work as a consultant and speaker, plus my continuous research into customer expectations and behaviors, I consistently discover new levers that businesses and organizations can use to gain a competitive advantage.
I’m not a futurist. I’m not addicted to innovation for innovation’s sake. I’ll never tell you to do something that will require you to upend your existing organization. If I wouldn’t do it in my business, why would I ask you to do it in yours?
Instead, I take what you’re probably already doing today, and I figure out where you can win by changing your emphasis. Doing more or getting better at what you already have, and what your competitors are likely ignoring, is key.
In the past, I’ve recommended you take advantage of levers like social media, content marketing, empathy in customer service, and word of mouth.
Now, my work and my research has shown me quite clearly that one of the very best ways you can lead in your category is by understanding the critical relationship between responsiveness and revenue. It is truly The Time to Win. Thanks for reading this little book. It won’t take long –and that’s the point!
Now,my work and my research has shown me quite clearly thatone of the very best ways youcan leadin your category is by understandingthe criticalrelationship betweenresponsivenessandrevenue. istrulyTheTimetoWin. Thanks for reading this little book. It won’t take long –andthat’sthepoint!
The pandemic forced us to treasure our time. It reminded us that nothing is guaranteed, and that time is the only thing on this planet that we all share, equally. The ONLY thing. Elon Musk and someone experiencing homelessness. Americans and Venezuelans. Educated and uneducated. Grandfathers and grandsons. Saints and sinners.
We ALL have 1,440 minutes each day, and every day. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you are, or where you are; you cannot have more than 1,440 and you cannot make more.
All the business trends like quiet quitting, the great resignation, work from home, and leisure travel, are all the SAME TREND: we care about time and how we spend it more than ever. Today, when a business or organization takes longer than you expect, it feels like they are stealing time from you.
Conversely, when a business is faster than you anticipated, it feels like you’ve received a gift: the gift of time.
Speed has always been an important part of the customer experience. But the research suggests it’s now the most important..
My research found that 2/3 of customers say that speed is as important as price!
You’ve no doubt heard the adage: Good, Fast, Cheap – pick any two.
Today, you can decide whether you want to be fast and inexpensive, or fast and high quality. But being fast is not optional.
You might be thinking “But Jay, I’ve read a lot about customer experience, and it sounds like customers care a lot about other components, not just speed.”
That’s true. But when it comes to customer satisfaction, time reigns supreme.
Yes, customers care about personalization, but you’ll overlook a business getting your name wrong if you can get fast service.
And, we prefer kindness and empathy, but you’ll set it aside if it saves you time. How empathetic is a chat bot? Yet, about a third of customers prefer to use them. Why? Indeed…it’s the need for speed.
If a business or organization (or friend, spouse, colleague, or offspring) responds more rapidly, we interpret that as them caring more about us and our issue.
I hired a painter recently.
This is because speed (or lack thereof) creates strong emotions inside all human beings. We can’t help it. It’s just the way we’re wired – and the way western society has developed.
The first painter responded to my inquiry within four hours.
The second painter responded in one day.
The third painter responded in two days.
Guess which painter I hired?
The one who responded first.
And he was not the least expensive. In fact, he was the most expensive.
But I was willing to pay more because I equated speed with caring.
We all play this mental game. We say to ourselves: “Well, if it takes them a long time to get back to me BEFORE they have my money, how responsive will they be once they HAVE my money?”
In any competitive scenario, you need to find a way to be the first to respond.
Will it require you to add people, or technology, or revamp processes so that you can consistently be faster than your competition? Perhaps. And I realize that can be a tricky assignment. But being first will unlock substantial new revenue that more than pays for what you need to add or change to be faster.
Because today, the revenue loss you experience from being the second or third to respond is often invisible.
The second and third painters to respond –who didn’t get the job – why do they THINK they lost?
Price.
It’s human nature.
We almost always assume it’s price.
So, what happens?
The next time a potential painting job comes along, painter number three drops the price, hoping to win. But they are still the least responsive, so they lose again.
Amazed at how aggressive other painters must be in their bidding, next time the painter drops the price again. Still loses!
Only on the next opportunity – when all the profit margin has been given away to offer a rock-bottom price the customer simply cannot ignore – does the painter finally get the job.
Here’s the dangerous part that you need to remember:
When you lose on responsiveness, it’s almost always invisible.
There’s no report or spreadsheet (in most organizations) that shows how, when, and why they lost a new customer because they weren’t as quick as the competition.
And this is why speed is such a terrific lever for you to use in your category: your competitors are unlikely to understand or identify this opportunity.
Not only is speed a huge driver of new customer acquisition, it’s also a massive factor in customer loyalty and retention.
In fact, 85% of customers say that responsiveness is an important factor in their loyalty to a business.
There’s no question responsiveness creates revenue. And lack of responsiveness reduces revenue. The data show this clearly to be the case. But I am not suggesting that the solution is to just be as fast as possible, always. That’s too simple, and it’s also not true. Speed at all costs…costs.
I went to a Mexican restaurant and ordered enchiladas. And in 90 SECONDS, they appeared. PRESTO!
I was flummoxed.
Is there an enchilada machine back there?
Did someone else order these enchiladas and send them back, so they’ve just been waiting around for the next person to order?
Do they employ some kind of soothsayer who figures out what people are likely to
order, like those guys who guess your weight at a carnival?
The enchiladas were TOO fast.
Too much speed decays trust.
You ever use a chat bot to communicate with a business, and you type in your question and the answer comes back in two seconds?
Too fast. You know that chat bot is either a robot, or a human employing some nifty copy-and-paste.
There’s a company that invented a machine that uses some sort of electro-magnetic field to change the flavor of an alcoholic spirit, allowing mediocre vodka to become decent vodka by changing the molecular structure somehow.
My friend Jeff owns a distillery and tested the machine. It works, but the problem is that when you add the original spirit to the
machine, it starts to spit out improved alcohol in an instant!
It seems too good to be true. It’s too fast. And, in fact, Jeff told the manufacturer that they needed to program some sort of 30second delay mechanism, to boost trust in the outcome. You probably aren’t seeking out the fastest tattoo artist. Or the most rapid divorce attorney. Yikes!
Being incredibly fast isn’t ALWAYS ideal.
Certainly, many businesses and organizations respond too slowly to meet escalating customer expectations.
And in certain scenarios, it’s also possible to be too fast, which also creates consumer confidence issues. In every customer interaction, however, there is an optimal and ideal amount of elapsed time: not too slow, and not too fast. This is the “Goldilocks zone” of responsiveness. I call it:
The Right Now: the perfect amount of elapsed time in every customer interaction
Each interaction with a customer or prospective customer (or, for that matter, a spouse, friend, child, or colleague) can be mapped on a continuum of confidence based on expectations, responsiveness, and resulting trust gained or lost.
or of the situation or scenario at hand.
For example, to get an appointment at a modestly high-end hair salon catering to women, you typically need to make an appointment somewhere around six weeks in advance.
But, to get an appointment at a modestly high-end nail salon catering to women, you typically need to make an appointment just a day or two in advance, and walk-ins remain common in many instances.
These businesses have very similar clientele, processes, and market dynamics yet the customers of each have very different expectations about time, speed, and responsiveness.
Even for businesses in the same industry, how they position their offerings in the
marketplace has a huge influence on the speed expectations of their customers and prospects.
The fast-food restaurant industry, for example, is pretty speed based. Fast is, after all, in the NAME!
Yet, there is one competitor in that category that reigns supreme: Pal’s Sudden Service.
Founded in 1956 in Tennessee, Pal’s Sudden Service is a 30-location fast-food operator that has perfected speed as their core competitive differentiator in a crowded category.
Across the entire fast-food world, the average amount of time it takes to fulfill a drive-thru order is 76 seconds. Less than one-and-a-half minutes from talking into the speaker to grabbing the bag. Nice!
But Pal’s scoffs at 76 seconds. They do it in 20 seconds! Wow!
Now you might be thinking, “that’s neat, Jay, but I’m sure Pal’s is moving so fast that they must screw up customers’ orders.” The opposite is true. They have the best order accuracy rate in the United States. So, yes, it is possible to be fast and maintain high quality.
Now, let’s examine the opposite end of the spectrum: The Cheesecake Factory.
Cheesecake Factory restaurants have legendarily large menus. They make all the food.
I wrote a long case study about this business in my book on word of mouth, Talk Triggers, and discovered that they make chicken 63 different ways. Even chickens don’t know 63 different ways to make chicken!
The chatter in social media about the size of The Cheesecake Factory menu is constant, and constantly hilarious, like this tweet:
The menu is so vast, that, of course, The Cheesecake Factory isn’t known for speed.
Can you imagine being waitstaff there?
“Good evening. Are you ready to place your order?”
“Ummm. No. Not even close.”
Pal’s Sudden Service and The Cheesecake Factory are both in the restaurant business. Yet one succeeds with speed, and the other succeeds despite not being very fast at all. Their respective customers’ expectations are very different, so their versions of The Right Now also vary.
Age impacts The Right Now.
In the research (TheTimeToWin.com), I created The Urgency Index, which measures how often customers in different generations expect business to reply within 4 hours, across all contact channels.
Before I did the research, I -- probably like you -- anticipated that young people would be the least patient consumers.
This is because I have two kids who are in their early 20s, and they grew up in an era of being able to contact a business with a text message. I grew up having to write an actual letter and put a stamp on it--and then wait three weeks.
However, the truth is the EXACT OPPOSITE. Older people are the least patient, and younger people are the most patient.
Is it because Boomers have less time left? Is it because Gen Z may have fewer life responsibilities, so they aren’t as annoyed by having to wait for a business to reply?
I’m not sure, but, if your core customers are 60 or older, a little extra speed may be just what they need.
The Right Now also varies by the times in which we live. What was fast five years ago seems slow today. And when you look a bit further back, it’s hilarious what we once thought of as rapid.
In 1858, the United States Government gave the first transcontinental mail contract to the Butterfield Overland Mail company.
They guaranteed delivery from St. Louis to San Francisco in 25 days. Nobody thought it could be done that fast!
That wouldn’t work today.
In fact, nearly half of all customers will not tolerate waiting longer than 3 minutes in a store, or on a website.
You might presently be thinking “Jay, there are a lot of situations where we interact with customers or prospective customers. We can’t be super-fast at all of them. Where does speed matter most?”
There is literally no interaction where speed isn’t viewed as vital by at least 2/3 of all customers, according to my research.
The data show clearly that if you give customers time, they will give you money. And if you cost customers time, it will cost you money. But I want to make sure you have actionable advice that you can put into practice right away.
The 6-piece Time to Win Framework is a collection of the areas of emphasis and new actions you should do in your organization or business to succeed with speed.
The first component is the Got It Audit.
By the way, if you’re enjoying this little book, or just have questions, feel free to email me at any time at Jay@JayBaer.com.
As you might expect, I’ll probably get back to you FAST.
The Right Now is the ideal amount of elapsed time in every interaction.
How long does it take you today?
The challenge for most organizations is that they DO NOT KNOW.
How long does it take your customers to get a price?
To get a delivery scheduled?
To get an invoice?
To pay an invoice?
To get a question answered?
When I ask business leaders these questions, they invariably say, “Jay, usually it takes us three days, but sometimes it takes five, and occasionally we can do it in two.”
That’s not data; it’s a collection of hand-picked anecdotes.
If you want to optimize your responsiveness and use it as a competitive advantage – and, if you’ve read this far, I think you do – then you need a Got It Audit.
This is where you do the analytical work necessary to learn, specifically, what is the median and mean time necessary for a prospective customer to get an appointment set up with one of your salespeople? (as just one example)
Only when you know how long it really takes you today can you start to improve that responsiveness, which will unlock desirable customer behaviors.
How desirable?
Very desirable.
Roughly 1/3 customers become more loyal or less loyal when a business responds faster or slower than they expect.
The impact on revenue can be massive.
Note, however, that expectations for “fast enough” vary considerably by contact mechanism.
More than half of all customers - across all age ranges - expect a reply in four hours or less using most communication channels.
It's also important to try to eliminate variability in your responsiveness, because a customer or prospect cannot
know what your “usual” response time is; just what they experienced.
A few months ago, I was in Minneapolis at a strategy retreat with colleagues.
We’re all professional speakers. It’s time for lunch. I suggest room service. And my friend Phil says:
“No. I called room service yesterday, and it took an hour-and-a-half. We don’t have that kind of time. Let’s go to the restaurant across the street.”
It doesn’t matter if room service is USUALLY fast. For Phil, it was slow, and that one fumble cost the hotel $200 the next day.
Just like when you don’t get hired in the first place because you’re not the first to respond, the revenue loss for the hotel is invisible. They can’t see it in a spread sheet. But it’s there.
You must close the gap between your fastest and slowest scenarios.
Also, variability in your speed can create uncomfortable consequences. This is because when you are slower than customers expect you to be, they naturally look for a reason.
Some customers will draw the conclusion that slowness is because they don’t have enough loyalty points. Or because of their gender. Or race. Or how they dress. Or any number of other factors.
Variability in response times costs you money and causes drama.
The first component in The Time to Win framework is to figure out how long it takes your customers to get what they need from you today, and then begin to optimize it by finding your version of The Right Now.
One of the very best ways you can reduce elapsed time – or at least customers’ perception of your responsiveness, is to answer questions BEFORE they are asked. The reality is that you already KNOW the questions your customers and prospects are likely to have about your organization.
Here’s a great exercise:
1. Grab a piece of paper and a pen
2. Write down the 25 questions customers ask most often
3. Go to your website and see how many of those answers can be gotten within two clicks
Usually, the answer is seven or fewer.
Even on business websites that have defined “frequently asked questions” sections, the number of
questions/answered listed is, in most cases, far fewer than 25.
If you can – off the top of your head –conjure 25 (or more) common customer queries. What is the thinking behind NOT answering all of them in a way that makes it easy for your key audiences to get that information?
Stop playing hide-and-seek with your answers.
Dr. Glenn Gorab is an oral surgeon in Clifton, New Jersey. In the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut region, there are somewhere around 435 oral surgeons.
They all perform essentially the same services, for approximately the same price.
Nobody has a special tooth laser, and there aren’t a lot of budget-focused “Sav-OnMouth-Surgery” providers, because most of it is covered by insurance.
Often, based on location: which surgeon is closest to home or work?
But not in Dr. Gorab’s case. He gets new patients from all over, driven entirely by word of mouth (no pun intended).
How?
Every Friday, his office staff gives him a list of names and phone numbers. On Saturday morning he calls each of those people:
“Hi! This is Glenn. I’m your oral surgeon. I understand you’re coming to the office for the very first time next week. Before you get here, are there any questions you have that I might answer?”
Mind blown!
He doesn’t wait for patients to ask questions once they show up, he solicits the questions before they arrive. Isn’t that literally the fastest you can be when you answer questions before they’re even asked?
Dr. Gorab says that 75% of his patients mention these phone calls when they come to the office. And every day, a new patient makes an appointment, saying:
“I have to drive miles out of my way. I pass by several other oral surgeons. But I want YOU to be my surgeon because Dr. Gorab called my friend Shirley before she ever even came to the office.”
Glenn told me once that he describes these benefits to all his dentist buddies, but none of them follow his lead.
And that’s the thing about speed and responsiveness in business…
We think “fast enough” is fast enough. But if you understand the relationship between responsiveness and revenue, you’ll make speed a much greater area of emphasis in your organization.
It’s quite common that when we get a question to which we do not have an immediate answer, we go seek that answer. We look it up. We talk to Bob in accounting. We call corporate. Whatever it takes.
And then – and only then – once the answer is secured, do we reply to the inquisitor.
Stop doing it that way.
The entire time you’re securing the needed information to reply, the person who asked the question is wondering:
“Did she get my question?”
“Am I being blown off?”
The uncertainty of whether the query is being addressed creates real anxiety.
You’ve experienced this yourself.
You send an email to a colleague or service provider.
If you don’t hear back for a day or two, the stress starts to build.
“What’s going on over there?”
But, if you send the exact same email and receive an out-of-office autoresponder, it takes all the stress away, does it not?
You don’t get the answer faster, but you instantly know about the delay, why it exists, and when it might be eliminated.
The best way to handle questions from customers, prospects, colleagues, friends, spouses, children and beyond is to immediately reply:
“That’s a good question. So good in fact, I don’t know the answer. But I’m going to find out. And then I’ll let you know soon.”
This takes it OFF their mental to-do list and wipes away the anxiety while waiting.
Does this require you to reply twice? Yes, but the first one takes little time, and the
byproduct of reducing the questioner’s anxiety is worth it.
Respond before you have all the answers!
Our current home has a pond in the backyard. Or maybe it’s a fountain? It’s weird. It’s some kind of pond/fountain hybrid. It’s a pountain, I suppose.
Regardless, I grew up in a desert. My knowledge of ornamental water features is limited.
When we moved in, we discovered that the pountain was leaking, and that it also incubated a bunch of water lilies and similar aquatic life.
That took it firmly out of the DIY category for me. I went in search of a pond consultant. And I found one, in the next town over.
(I remain incredibly disappointed that the name of his business is not “Pondzi Scheme”.)
I left a voice mail for the pond genius.
Remarkably, he returned my call within two hours, and said:
“Jay, I’m really busy right now. I can’t make it out to your place for a review for another three weeks. It’ll be around $200 for an initial tune up. But, if you have 5 minutes now, I can tell you a few things to look for and to think about. Would that be alright?”
It would indeed!
All my immediate issues were solved:
- Found a pond man
- Found a pond man who returns calls
- Got an initial estimate of timeline
- Got a rough budget estimate
- Received immediate help with questions
He didn’t know all my answers. He’d never even seen the pountain. But he knew enough to eliminate my anxiety, and that’s an incredible lesson for us all, everywhere in our lives.
The fourth piece of the Time to Win framework is to set expectations. Remember, “customer experience” and how people feel about speed is driven by what they expect vs. what happens in reality. Managing expectations for speed is more important than raw speed itself.
Perhaps you’ve been to a restaurant –maybe they’re part of the “slow food” movement – where signage or menu notations warn patrons to not expect their roast chicken to appear in an instant?
That’s a good example of setting expectations for speed.
Conversely, and less often seen, are organizations that ramp UP responsiveness expectations. It takes courage, for certain.
Zeck sells software that helps boards of directors stay more organized. The Contact Us form on their website reads: “We’ll respond fast. Maybe faster than Usain Bolt.”
If you’re going to name-check a worldfamous Olympic sprinting champion, you better have your operations dialed in to reply to that contact form in a hurry!
Managing expectations around responsiveness is harder than ever. In fact, 83% of customers expect businesses to be
as fast or faster than they were before the pandemic!
Sometimes, we purposefully give customers false expectations. We feel like it’s better to give them hope, to look on the bright side, to assume that the best-case scenario will happen this time.
It’s not a winning strategy.
I know this firsthand.
I bought a custom sofa online during the pandemic.
I selected shape, size, fabric, and color so I knew it would take a while. The website said six weeks. Seemed reasonable, so I placed the order.
More than 12 weeks later, still no sofa. I was well into the angry stage by then, and FINALLY got a real person from the company on the phone, who said:
“We’ve had big delays with foam and wood and shipping. Sofas are taking at least 10-16 weeks to complete now.”
I asked how long the 10-16 weeks turnaround has been the norm.
“Oh, for more than a year!”
Flummoxed, I asked what seemed to me to be an obvious question - why does the website still say six weeks?
“Oh, we don’t want people to stop placing new orders!”
Sigh.
The business you lose when you tell customers the truth is a LOT less than the business you lose when you purposefully set false expectations around speed.
This is because while you may get the first order, you’ll never get a second order. Not from that customer, and not from anyone they know.
Under-promising and then over-delivering is still a successful business strategy, and it really works for speed and responsiveness.
Uncertainty elongates our perception of elapsed time.
When you go to a deli for some pastrami and take a number, you instantly check the digital display to see what order number is currently being helped. You do the mental calculation of “I’m 77, and they are on 74.”
The certainty of where you are in line reduces anxiety and makes the wait itself seem shorter, because you are fully aware of progress as it happens:
Now serving 75.
Now serving 76.
Now serving YOU.
This is why so many call centers deploy the “we expect to be able to answer your call in approximately 19 minutes” messaging. 19 minutes is still 19 minutes.
But 19 minutes feels less arduous when you know that there’s an end in sight.
19 minutes feels like FOREVER if you have no idea if your call will be answered in one minute or one hour.
The difference between what you know about your business and how it operates, and what the customer or prospect knows is called the Uncertainty Gap.
Closing Uncertainty Gaps must be a priority for your organization.
Providing constant status updates may seem superfluous, but the impact they have on customer psyche is enormous.
Think about the success of the Domino’s Pizza Tracker. They tell you EVERYTHING about the status of your pizza…
They’re adding mushrooms!
They’re putting on the cheese!
It’s going in the box!
It’s in the vehicle!
It’s like having an NBA play-by-play announcer describe the manufacture and delivery of your pizza.
Is it a bit unnecessary? Functionally, yes. It’s not ultimately important for pizza consumers to know precisely when mushrooms are applied. But emotionally, it’s huge.
Remember, The Time to Win framework tells us that expectations are the most important aspect of responsiveness.
And it’s very difficult for customers to keep their expectations in check in the absence of information.
Furthermore, Western society has embraced status updates and uncertainty gap closing broadly enough that it’s jarring to consider how things worked in the before times.
For instance, perhaps you are old enough to have needed transportation in the days before Uber, Lyft and other rideshare apps?
Back then, you called a telephone number for a local taxi company. After a few rings, a brusque answer:
“Yellow Cab. This is Lou.”
May I get a cab at Monroe and 2nd Avenue?
“Yeah. He’ll be over to get you.”
And that was IT in terms of status updates. The uncertainty gaps are numerous and massive…
When will the taxi arrive? Don’t know.
Which taxi will be your taxi? Don’t know.
How long to get to the destination? Don’t know.
How much will this cost? Don’t know.
You knew some kind of car driven by a human was arriving to get you at some point in the future. End of available information!
It’s much, much different today.
Now, we know the license plate of the rideshare driver. We even see her headshot!
We know how long it will take to get to you, AND how long it will then take to get to the destination.
Even the price is provided in advance.
There is so much certainty, you can even follow along on the map as the tiny car icon goes the wrong way on the way to get you, wasting three minutes of your time!
Customers are being conditioned to expect status updates and to hate uncertainty gaps.
Surely, you know more about what’s going on than your customers do. How can you transfer some of that knowledge and realtime insight over to them?
The last piece of the Time to Win framework is a huge financial opportunity for you. Offer a fast pass.
Considering two in three customers believe speed is as important as price, it’s no surprise that one in four are willing to pay more…a lot more…to not have to wait.
If 25% of your customers will pay 50% more to not wait, that’s potentially a total of 12.5% more dollars to offer a no-waiting option.
You’ve already seen fast passes in our world. TSA PreCheck is a fast pass. You pay more, you wait less. CLEAR is a more expensive version of the same idea, with even less waiting required.
LineLeap is a mobile app massively popular in communities where a large university is present. Both Bloomington, Indiana, (where I live now) and Tucson, Arizona, (where I went to college) have many LineLeap users.
At the most popular bars in these communities, students use the app to pay extra to skip the wait, getting into their favorite places without standing in line for 30-60 minutes.
The venues price and re-price the line cutting fee in real-time, maximizing profit while controlling crowds.
I took advantage of a fast pass myself recently; no app required.
I was in Las Vegas giving a keynote presentation at Caesars Palace. (maybe I can deliver a presentation to your team, your clients, or your association? Head over to JayBaer.com for information on inperson and virtual presentations of The Time to Win and other topics)
I arrived at the hotel at 2:30 pm. The Vegas standard check-in time is 4:00 pm. Usually in this scenario, the front desk says:
"Mr. Baer, your room isn't ready. Please check back at four, and we'll give you a key at that time."
But now, Caesars Palace has an alternative option!
"Mr. Baer, your room will be ready after 4:00 pm. However, for an additional $30, we can put you in a room right now. Would you like to take advantage of that opportunity?"
After getting my keys, I loitered near the front desk to monitor the fast pass conversion rate. My eavesdropping indicated that yes, about 1 in 4 guests forked over the $30. That's nearly $2 million in pure profit each year, based on these calculations:
3,960 rooms average stay = 3 nights = 1,320 check-ins per day
half arrive early = 240,000 fast pass decisions per year
1 in 4 say yes at $30 = $1.8 million+ in profit
Not every customer will want a fast pass, but those who do...they want it BAD.
And it will work in every business: chiropractor, dog groomer, attorney, software, manufacturing, accountant.
I’m offering a fast pass myself.
In addition to the work I do as a business growth and customer experience author, researcher, speaker, and advisor, I am also one of the world’s most popular tequila influencers (non-celebrity division).
I publish several tequila videos per week on Instagram and TikTok. About half of my videos are reviews, where I rate tequilas on a 1-10 scale.
(Want to see me in action and learn a lot about tequila?
Instagram.com/TequilaJayBaer or TikTok.com/Tequila.Jay)
Brands contact me often to review their tequila. And I do so at no cost beyond free samples to review.
But I have quite a backlog of tequilas to rate. Thus, I offer a “rapid review” option whereby I’ll review their tequila the very next week, in exchange for a fee.
Fast pass!
The pandemic reminded us of the importance of time, and that we each have just 1,440 precious minutes per day.
We care about time more than ever.
Speed and responsiveness are now the most important components of customer experience. After all, 2/3 of customers say speed is as important as price.
You’re probably not as fast as your customers and prospects prefer, and that could be hurting the success of your efforts to acquire and keep customers.
But it’s too simple to just say “be faster.”
Because you can be TOO fast.
Too much speed decays trust, which is why you need to discover and optimize the
If you can slightly exceed expectations at every touch point, customers and prospects will reward you. By buying more. Buying more often. And telling their friends.
How do you make this happen?
There are six components to the framework for The Time to Win:
If you give your customers time, they will give you money. But if you cost your customers time, it will cost you money.
This is truly The Time to Win. And I know that you can use these ideas to gain new customers, unlock new revenue, and improve customer loyalty, starting……NOW!
Give your customers time and they will give you money. Cost your customers time and it will cost you money. The Time to Win reveals:
• Six ways to use speed as a competitive business advantage
• Why and how responsiveness creates revenue
• Why we care about speed more than ever