If you sat down at the #1 restaurant in the world and were served a hot dog, how would you feel?
As it turns out, this was actually a pivotal moment of customer service for restauranteur Will Guidara. The full story is in the video below; the brief version is that near the end of a meal at the Eleven Madison Park restaurant, a few diners–visitors to New York–were discussing their visit when Guidara happened to walk by and overhear one of the guests say that their only regret was that they were leaving the city without having eaten a classic New York street food hot dog.
Guidara seized the moment through an act of what he would later call “unreasonable hospitality”: He raced out of the restaurant to a hot dog vendor, bought a few hot dogs, brought them back to his kitchen and asked the chef to plate them, and then he served the hot dogs to the guests, much to their surprise and delight.
I love this approach to serving customers, and it ties so well to the game industry and what we try to do at Stonemaier Games. It’s literally in our mission statement to bring joy and memorable moments to tabletops worldwide.
That said, I had a hard time thinking of examples of unreasonable hospitality at Stonemaier Games (opposed to reasonable hospitality, like answering questions, providing the service/products as promised, replacement parts, etc). I realized that acts of unreasonable hospitality–particularly for a publisher without a physical entity–require a unique combination of factors:
- Presence: If Guidara wasn’t wandering through his restaurant, he wouldn’t have overheard the diners speaking about their New York experience. Fortunately, social media makes presence very easy and unobtrusive–it’s possible to be at the right place at the right time quite frequently.
- Creativity: I recently mentioned a Stonemaier product on Instagram, and a person lamented that they really wanted to try it but couldn’t afford it at this time. I created a special discount code just for them, which is fine, just not particularly creative. Also on Instagram recently, when a retailer (Mox Boarding House) posted about a devastating flood, I offered for us to replace any damaged Stonemaier products for free. This is also fine, but is it unreasonable hospitality?
- Surprise: The customer needs to have shared something about themselves without actually asked for anything. Imagine the above story if the customers had waved over Guidara and asked him to fetch them a hot dog. (Of course, as customers, you’re welcome to ask for things, especially if there’s a problem or question that we can help with.)
- Authority: People need the authority to act. For example, everyone at Stonemaier Games is empowered with the authority to go above and beyond for any customer. They don’t need to check with me first–if they have the chance to bring joy to a customer, they’re free (and encouraged) to do it on their own.
- Information: Specifically, I’m thinking about contact/address information. For example, if we identify an act of unreasonable hospitality that requires a physical item, we need to know where to send that item. I think we walk a fine line here, as we have access via our webstore to tens of thousands of customer addresses, but customers didn’t provide those addresses for unrequested surprise packages.
- Lack of Impediments: I recently talked about the concept of unreasonable hospitality with a coworker, and he brought up an excellent point that even with all the above boxes checked, if there’s something about our standard procedures that impedes the process, unreasonable hospitality is quite hard to accomplish. For example, if we want to surprise a customer with a special package of Stonemaier products, we need to have a communicative contact at the corresponding fulfillment center to make it happen quickly. Talking through this aspect of unreasonable hospitality with my coworker was really helpful in itself, as it helped me identify some changes we need to make to better serve our customers in general.
While creating this list, one recent act of unreasonable hospitality came to mind as an example. Last month, I noticed someone on Instagram mention that they’ve been struggling to find a copy of Hanamikoji in Canada after seeing me rave about it so many times on my YouTube channel. So I surprised the person by sending them my personal copy of the game as a gift (Hanamikoji isn’t a Stonemaier product). This gift doesn’t quite check all of the above boxes–I had to first message the person to get their address, so it wasn’t a complete surprise–but it still felt like a special way to “unreasonably” bring joy to a Stonemaier customer/follower.
Thanks to reader Helen for inspiring this article with her recent comment about this type of service! Have you experienced or provided an act of unreasonable hospitality?
Also read:
- Every Customer Is Unique: A Magical Encounter
- 10 Things I Learned Last Week from Best-in-Class Customer Service
- Random Acts of Freeness
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
21 Comments on “Have You Experienced Unreasonable Hospitality?”
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I think design day qualifies. I doubt there is much if any financial return for stonemaier games but it is a great day for small designers. It is one of very few opportunities to get prototype games played by a large number of new players as well as just a good time. Thanks for doing something you do not have to it is truly one of my most anticipated days of gaming each year😊
I’m very glad it feels that way, Mark! We do take a net loss on the day, but it isn’t a big expense, and I think it’s worth it. :)
Is this challenging to do on a company level rather than a personal level? I’m travelling in Asia with my family right now (first overseas trip since COVID) and have experienced so much unreasonable hospitality from people. A stranger drove us to the airport for free last week when we mentioned we couldn’t find a taxi. The woman sitting next to my husband on the train right now has just given him a packet of dried banana because he said that he really liked it. But does anyone worry that on a corporate or professional level it can look like favoritism and that all customers would come to expect it? Maybe I’m being cynical though?
Sarah: I totally think this can be just as much about personal interactions as it is about professional/business ones. The hospitality you’ve received sounds amazing! As for favoritism, I think part of it depends on how public it is and what you’re doing. That’s one of the reasons I’m not sure I love the unreasonable hospitality of replying to a customer on an online forum to give them a free game we publish (in some cases), as in some ways it could devalue the experience of everyone else following along who spend their hard-earned money on the same product.
I totally agree about being careful not to devalue the experience of everyone else. I think your example of giving your personal copy of a game to someone is a good way to do it right. I’m really aware of the need to be fair in my own professional practice as a teacher, particularly when I teach my own kids and their friends. Btw my daughter has brought her Stonemaier t-shirt on our travels as she says it’s one of her comfiest!
I’m glad she likes the shirt! :)
I started thinking about this and where I can (and have tried) to bring unreasonable hospitality, and I realised I was going down the same thought process as you do in the article – which is questioning or writing off a lot of the things I’ve done as not that unreasonable and therefore not deserving.
It’s not unreasonable to you (or me) as a publisher to give away a free game to someone, because it’s well within our means, but as a customer it is utterly unreasonable to be given something that you value by a business that is in the business of making money. So to a customer it is unreasonable hospitality.
Reading this reminded me a lot of your recent article of customer service, with surprise being the part that made it memorable and in this particular article I think surprise is still important as it’s really the only one the customer sees. The other 5 are sort of behind the scenes things you need in place to achieve it, but surprise is that first moment the customer experiences it.
Ben: That’s a great point about how “unreasonable” is in the eye of the beholder.
I can think of a great example where you’ve done this: a few years ago, H (your replacement parts volunteer) was talking about how we love Pandemic, but hadn’t tried out the new Rising Tide variant… and out of nowhere, you sent us a copy!
After Iberia, it was a good twist on the system, and we still have the game (and ended up not getting any more Pandemic variants since – bar the Legacy ones – so we don’t own Fall of Rome, for example – friends do, so there’s no need for us to have our own copy).
It was a lovely surprise out of nowhere, and we really thank you for it, Jamey.
Thank you so much for sharing that! I’m so fortunate that we have such amazing replacement parts helpers. :)
I love the term “unreasonable hospitality”! It can be serendipitous both to receive AND to provide. While finalizing my game Legacies, I saw several preorders all come through after a quiet period and realized (thanks to a friend who sent me the link) that ThinkerThemer had mentioned it as one of their most anticipated KS games on a BoardGameCo video. They also commented on the fact that some people could have their faces drawn on cards and one of them joked “wouldn’t it be funny if the game showed up and one of the cards looked like you?” My artist had just asked me for a new piece of reference art for a card so I found an online picture of Amy from ThinkerThemer and sent it to him for that last card. Fast forward a year and one of their followers on Instagram pointed out to Amy that she had made her way onto a card in the game. It was a fun thing to do as a creator to surprise a customer (who had happened to drive some additional business my way) with the thing she had joked about on the video.
That’s such a great example, Jason!
Glad you found it sparked some interesting ideas.
It did! Thank you so much for sharing it!
When I attend in-person events, if I can sense that someone is new to the boardgame hobby, I try to focus on helping them find games that might interest them instead of trying to sell my game. I don’t like sales-people pushing their product down my throats and I try to do the same when I am selling my game at physical events. Maybe this leads to less overall sales but I personally find it hard to do things I wouldn’t enjoy if I was the other person
I think that’s wonderful!
We can ship you a copy of 2Tomatoes Games’ edition of Hanamikoji. It’s in spanish, but you already know the rules :) Drop us an email with your shipping adress.
👍🏼
That’s very kind of you to offer, Alvaro. As much as I love Hanamikoji, I don’t mind other 2-player games in my collection taking its place for a while, but I really appreciate this gesture and may be in touch in the future. :)
I totally understand Jamey. There’s plenty of great 2-player games in the market although Hanamikoji has a speacial place in my heart. If you happen to want to play Hanamikoji again, let us know and we may add a copy of Coral, that offers cut-throat games for 2-players. Thanks for your posts. They really add value to other publishers.