TLDR:
- Master the art of the compound effect concept
The significance of the compound effect
Immediately before I started writing this article, I got a popup from Notion asking me to set my cookie preferences, with the subtext being “Notion uses cookies to offer you a better experience.”
That is exactly what Hilton Doubletree intended with their cookies: to offer their customer a better experience.
If you’ve ever checked into a Doubletree hotel, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
When you check-in, you’re given a warm chocolate chip cookie that melts in your mouth with every bite.
And according to the official website, that is one of 483 million chocolate chip cookies they’ve given out to date.
MarketingExample.com states that 34% of guests go on to tell their friends about the cookie, with 25,000 stories being told about Doubletree hotels because of a mere cookie that costs $0.20 per unit to produce.
So how does all this relate to building a business you ask?
This is all a perfect example of the compound effect, a term devised by an American author Darren Hardy who wrote a book with this title, explaining how you can reap huge rewards from seemingly small, insignificant actions.
How this compounds for Hilton is that this seemingly minuscule gesture often ends up being compounded to symbolize a memorable customer experience, word-of-mouth marketing (who doesn’t love free PR?) for more people to be interested in staying at Doubletree during their vacations, high impact being created for the business from the very low cost of $0.20, repeat business, a competitive edge in the hospitality industry and most importantly, customer satisfaction.
What we can learn from Hilton Doubletree about building a business is simple: don’t disregard any part of the process for the customer experience or think that it doesn’t matter; think about every possible perspective of how you can differentiate and make it a truly unique and iconic experience, for as they’ve shown us, “it is the little things that do indeed count,” and in this case, compound.