An interesting customer-relations point, from our friend Ira Riklis:
Another part of our “secret sauce” if you will is that we don’t view the skier as our true customer. I’m not suggesting that we aren’t renting skis to skiers somehow, we are. But if the skier has a bad experience, they don’t go home and in a disgruntled voice say that Charter Sports was awful; they go home and say they had a lousy time in Vail and they wouldn’t recommend the Marriott in Lionshead. In essence, the skier is the customer of the mountain and, even more so, the hotel.
It is the job of the resort (both mountain and hotel) to put “butts in beds”, or BIBs as we call them. We don’t create the BIBs and they won’t decide to come to Vail or Lionshead in order to rent from Charter Sports. Once a BIB is in place, then we have the opportunity to provide them with their needs. So in essence, keeping the hotel happy by keeping THEIR customer happy is more important to us than the revenue that any particular skier may generate.
Therefore, if a skier comes in and is having a bad experience caused by any of our equipment (foot discomfort being the most likely), we move into high gear. First off, we will work diligently to determine the problem and solve it. Second, if the problem was severe, we will likely comp (not charge) the skier for the ski rental for the week. If the problem was really severe, we will probably comp their entire family for the week. And third, when they leave our store they will take along some small gifts like lip balm or hand warmers as our way of apologizing. These customers end up being our strongest advocates, often writing letters to the hotel or condo association extolling our service.
The greatest expression of these feelings occurs every year in the Travel & Leisure Magazine survey of their subscribers as to the 50 best ski resorts in North America. There are only two ski shops mentioned in the reviews and they are BOTH Charter Sports. In one instance we are mentioned by name and in the other we are nameless, but it must be us because we are the only ski shop in that resort. We are immensely proud of this compliment and have posted the articles in some of our stores (when space is available).