Last night I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express hotel in Norwich. I had been to see Jonathan Jay speak at an O4RB event. I was so impressed by Jonathan’s speech that I immediately invited him to speak for our O4RB members and guests in Cambridge, Huntingdon and Peterborough on 25 March – details very soon!

When I arrived at the Holiday Inn Express, I was immediately greeted by a very friendly young man on reception, and that kicked off a chain of small magic moments that all added up to a great customer experience, and led me to ‘tweet’ about the great service, as well as write the hotel a very favourable review on TripAdvisor.

It wasn’t just the friendly greeting, it was the eye contact, the smile, the making sure I was happy at each stage of the process, the complimentary peanuts on the bar when we returned from our evening event at another venue, and the friendly staff who were on duty this morning. All in all, it added up to a budget brand acting like a luxury brand, and consequently exceeding expectations. A far cry from the experience I had a year or two ago when I stayed at a luxury hotel and got the distinct impression that the staff were way too grand to lower themselves to speak to me!

Well done Holiday Inn Express Norwich, and it’s no surprise to me that Holiday Inn Express are the hotel partners for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London!

That brings me neatly to my plans for next week. I am going on a three-day course to become accredited to deliver WorldHost training. This training workshop was designed in Canada for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and was responsible for increasing levels of customer satisfaction in British Columbia last year. Now we are bringing it to the U.K. to help raise customer service standards here.

 I’m very excited about this and will write more when I have completed my training next week. I’m sure that by the end of 2010 there will be many more great customer service stories to share with you!