By Caroline Woffenden, MK Director

You walk into a shopping centre and it has to be as much about the experience as the products; you receive poor customer service from your bank or phone provider and your first reaction is to consider shifting loyalties and taking your business elsewhere. We live in an era of choice – huge choice – and that by default places service in a very powerful position. Really successful brands don’t simply rely on the commodity they sell – they wrap it up in a good experience, and great customer service.

To that end, there is nowhere that exemplifies customer service than the United States, specifically Las Vegas where I was last month. This place can sell, and it does.

I don’t often categorise myself as a marketeer’s dream – I am after all (to a large extent), a marketeer myself – but I order a water and a salad and without much persuasion from a happy, polite, extremely attentive waitress I’m ordering wine, a starter, a main salad with fries (hey I’m told – you don’t need to worry about your weight…enjoy the fries… They’re great! Ok, so I didn’t mention this customer service goddess’ blindness…). It’s the same in stores, taxis, everywhere throughout the hotel (every chamber maid I walk past says hello and wishes me a great day… Amazing they notice, and even more amazing to me is that they give the perception they care).

Yet I don’t feel duped at this sugar coated selling. I feel content and almost happy to be part of some form of club. Genuine or not (and for most I suspect it’s not) these people all give the impression that they live for selling, offering, bringing, giving you something. Nothing is too much trouble whether you’re in a burger joint or the Bellagio. It’s not a chore, it’s a pleasure. And that’s the secret to their success, they sell it all so well and that’s really what we’re all buying into.

So behind the hedonistic and crazy destination that is the world famous Las Vegas, standing back from the loud, colourful noise I’ve learnt a lot: give it with a smile and the world smiles back!