Not getting premium service?

I had a conversation on twitter today about not being prioritized in a bank – on your first visits to the bank. The bank prioritized any returning customer over you. From a customer perspective this is wrong. The bank doesn’t know your portfolio or the potential business you can bring to the bank. You can be the next Bill Gates. This is not the way of attracting new business.

On the other side your returning customers shouldn’t be deprioritized. They should feel like their business is important to the bank. And of top of this you have the premium customers that the bank will prioritize on top of regular customers. These three levels (or more) will be in a constant conflict. You risk losing customers from any of the three groups if you make the difference in service too small or too big. The same risk goes to all types of business that categorizes their customers.

I started in a cross-Nordic project in 2004 with “a-lot-of-travel “, earning Eurobonus Gold status within weeks. After a lot of nights at Scandic and Hilton I was “rewarded” Hilton Gold – both of these cards where valuable to me as a very frequent traveler. Breakfast in the SAS Gold lounge at Gardemoen was something I did several times per week – and I checked in-and-out of hotels more times than I like to remember. I continued for two years travelling weekly. Fast-track at airports, lounges and jumping in front of the standby-line was benefits I appreciated.

Knowing you could get a hotel room even without a reservation, or being prioritized in the standby-list is worth more than the bonus points. But now I have a role that doesn’t require me to travel heavily. So I am back on the Eurobonus Blue (entry-level), same with my Hilton card. So it is time to remember the “good times”:

Best Hilton experience
Best Hilton experience was a time when I checked in in Kuala Lumpur with a “normal” room (and my gold card) being upgraded to a suite with lounge access. That was just great. That hotel “room” redefined hotels. Feeling as a prioritized and valuable customer is an important way of keeping frequent business travelers who easily will move their business to another hotel or airline if they don’t feel “the love”.

Best Star Alliance experience
My best Star Alliance experience was after a canceled flight, arriving in LA from Fiji on my way to Oslo via London. Complaining about the delay in LA, we got upgraded to first class from LA to London. That changed oversea traveling.

So my conclusion is
You pay for what you get. If you want premium service from a bank, an airline or a hotel – pay for it. Or be the valuable customer they don’t want to lose! So the next time my luggage is lost and I am standing in line at the airport – I’ll accept that the guy behind me with his gold card will be first in line. He is currently (!) a more important customer than me.