When you host as many guests as we do each week, you're bound to see a few who have the sniffles, especially in the wintertime. One of our staff members noticed such a guest headed to the restroom. Suspecting the poor sick woman was in search of something to wipe her nose with, our staff member had a box of tissues ready when she returned from the bathroom.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
This gesture showed attentiveness, caring, and a willingness to proactively provide comfort and hospitality to a guest (who appreciated the gesture very much, by the way). These little actions are what make people say, "what a great place."

        

We have sent out "guest happiness surveys" for nearly a decade. Every person who books a meeting at sparkspace receives a thank you email with a link to our version of a satisfaction survey. We always ask for honest feedback, and we don't load the survey with questions that make us look good. Basically, we ask what they liked, what they didn't like, and how we can improve our service to future guests.

We're thrilled that a pretty high percentage of our guests actually take the time to fill out our survey. As a way to thank them, we actually read them! We used to only respond to the really, really good ones and the ones where everything just went wrong. As part of our 100SPARKS project, we now send a quick response to everyone that fills out our survey. We thank them, acknowledge any suggestions for improvement, and let them know what we're doing to make those improvements (if indeed we are).

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
When people fill out a survey, they hope somebody will actually read it. At the same time, they don't hold out much hope that anybody will. We delight and surprise our guests every time we respond to a survey. At the most basic level, people just want to be heard and acknowledged. Responding to them fills that need. And what we find that our guests really want to help us succeed. When they realize that we actually listen to what they tell us, they become more willing to give us great feedback which only makes us better!

        

We have a guest who uses video cameras in her training classes at sparkspace. Typically, our guests are completely self-sufficient. If they bring supplies or equipment, they plan on setting it up. With this guest, however, we realized that setting up and tearing down 5 video cameras and tripods can take a lot of time, so we help. We unpack and repack the cameras so the client can focus on prepping the content of her class instead of worrying whether she has enough time to hook up the cameras.

Where this really saves time, though, is at the end of the day. We save this guest at least 30 minutes of cleanup time, which means she gets to go home 30 minutes earlier.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
This effort takes only a little of our time, but it makes an impression that lasts a long, long time. Imagine if someone did something nice for you that saved you 30-60 minutes worth of time. Wouldn't you love that? This is one of the reasons this guest has turned into one of our biggest clients.

        

We produce a lot of workshops. In fact, about once per month we offer a free workshop to the public as a way to share our ideas and build community. We do this in addition to the many paid workshops that we produce for our corporate clients.

Our free workshops fill up very quickly. We always have more demand for seats than we can accommodate. While that sounds like a good problem to have, we really hate to leave anybody out of these great events. That's why we now offer multiple ways to access our workshops at little or no cost to participants who can't make the live event.

Sometimes we offer a teleseminar version of the workshop. Sometimes we offer the workshop or teleseminar on CD. We recently did this with our Five Sparks of Super Service workshop. We keep these alternative access points very low cost and try to deliver all the same content as our live event, modified for an audio audience.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
We believe in the abundance mentality. We actually provide an amazing amount of content in our free workshops and teleseminars. While many companies hoard their "proprietary" information and ideas, we've found that the more we share, the bigger our "fan base" grows. And fans tend to spend money eventually, so it really is a great win-win proposition.

        

The weather was a very mild 51 degrees in February...rare in Columbus. When the weather breaks like that, everyone tends to get cabin fever. Our staff thought our guests might like to know what the weather was like outside, so they posted this bright, cheery, hand-drawn weather update in our lobby. It brought many smiles and even encouraged a few guests to step outside for some fresh air.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
This spark cost 40 cents. That's the cost of a single piece of flip chart paper. Like the MasterCard commercial says, the result was priceless.

        

During the economic downturn, we have explored several ways to help our clients. One was to add video conferencing capabilities. Another was to create a lower cost alternative to our meeting space.

We studied our meeting room usage, picked the room that gets used the least, and made a special offer to our guests. For a limited time, we lowered the cost of this room considerably. Our Board Room (named for it's surfboard decor) is our smallest room and holds up to 6 people. It was our hope that smaller meetings and smaller companies would benefit from a great meeting space at a more affordable price right now.

By using our smallest room, we also are not cannibalizing our entire business with this lower price. Our other rooms are still full-price and are staying busy, even during the economic downturn.

By the way, for the groups that had booked this room already at full-price, we lowered the price for them (even though technically we didn't have to...we had contracts with them). It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
We took a fairly unused resource and created a benefit for our customers. We realized that this offer won't make us rich. It may not even make us as much money as if we had left it alone, but it is important for us to create positive energy with our customers. It is also important for us to try new and different ideas in our business and not get too set in the way we do things.

        

When the economy started to tank, we brainstormed how we could better serve our customers in a down economy. One idea we came up with was to offer a cost-effective way for people to have meetings and include their team members in other cities (without the travel costs).

Video Conferencing!

We had explored this idea in the past, but it was way too expensive to rationalize installing video conferencing capability for the 2 or 3 guests who asked for it each year. (FYI: we always referred them to a facility that already had the capability. We never leave a guest hanging with no options.)

We decided to explore the idea again and found that the technology was much more affordable and reliable than it had been in the past. We found a great service provider, tested the system, and loved it. We launched the capability immediately. One of the cool things about it is that we can hook it up to a projector and project a video conference larger than life-sized!

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
Rather than desperately try to sell more of our product during the down economy, we shifted our focus to our customer to figure out what might help them. This thinking resulted in a great new service offering for us that will last long after the economic downturn is over.

        

Our business is located inside an office building (a very hip renovated paint factory). One of the nice things about being a tenant in a larger building is that we don't have to clean the bathrooms! We share common bathrooms with the rest of the tenants on our floor.

The downside is that our guests don't necessarily understand that we don't "own" the bathrooms, nor are we responsible for the cleaning and upkeep. As far as they're concerned, they are the sparkspace bathrooms. As weird as it sounds, going to the bathroom when you are visiting someplace is part of the entire experience. And a dirty bathroom diminishes that experience.

So even though the bathrooms don't belong to us, we keep a pretty close eye on them. This often entails picking up the many pieces of paper towels that land on the floor or rinsing strange substances out of the sink. We also inform the building when a light bulb is burned out or the toilet paper is running low. So even though it's not our job to clean the bathrooms, we end up cleaning the bathrooms sometimes several times each day.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
This one is all about personal accountability ("what can I do to make sure the bathrooms are clean?") and realizing that the bathrooms, even though we don't own them, are a direct reflection on our business. We've eliminated the "it's not my job/those aren't our bathrooms" mentality and we just do what we need to do to maintain a great experience for our guests. It may be the least glamorous spark we feature, but it's no less important than any of the others.

        

Crossing the street from the parking garage to our building, one of our team members noticed a man walk one direction down the sidewalk, then abruptly switch directions, walk back down the street and into our office building.

Following the man by about 20 steps, our team member then witnessed the man walk into the stairwell, then back out with a slightly confused look on his face. It also became apparent that the man also had a folded up piece of paper in his hands, which was recognized as the directions we send out to our clients. Even with the directions (that we have painstakingly written and re-written several times to maximize clarity), the guy was still lost.

So, our team member nicely put him out of his misery by asking him, "Are you looking for sparkspace?"

"Yes," the man said. "I have no idea where I'm going."

"I'm headed there myself, let me show you the way," replied our team member. He then proceeded to our office, chatting with the man the entire way to put him at ease.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
Even though we have very clear directions to our office, being downtown can be disorienting to people. As soon as we recognized that the man was lost, we immediately offered help, direction, and a little bit of reassurance. The result was that the man transformed from frazzled and stressed to relaxed and happy in the span of a short walk down the hall and a one floor elevator ride.

Do you recognize the look of someone who is "lost" when they're trying to interact with your company or product? What do you do to help them?

        

We host a lot of meetings -- close to a thousand each year. Most of these are relatively easy and repetitive. A few times each month, we have days that are much more complex than normal. Sometimes the meetings are just larger or more numerous than normal. Sometimes a group has ordered more elaborate lunches. Sometimes we simply have a lot more details to capture, track, and execute. That's why we invented the "Big Day Sheet."

The "Big Day Sheet" is a form that we fill out to help us think through and capture all of the extra details required in a bigger than normal day. It's not terribly complex, but it helps us ask ourselves questions we might forget. The questions are based on our 9+ years of past experience with days like these. The Big Day Sheet helps us both plan and execute big days more smoothly. It becomes our game plan and a way to consistently inform our staff of everything that needs to be done.

Our Director of Guest Happiness, Elizabeth, is the keeper of our Big Day Sheets. She has taken the sheet to a whole new level by organizing the information and making sure names are assigned to specific tasks.

Why this is one of our favorite sparks:
Big days are important to us for two reasons. They are easy to screw up and they make us good money. If we screw up a big day, we could easily lose future business with our customers, so the short term gain of a big day could easily be offset by long-term loss. When big days run smoothly, the clients are extra happy. An added bonus is that our staff is also rewarded emotionally knowing that they kicked butt!