Unreasonable Hospitality workshops · Certified coach licensed to deliver them

Make your business unforgettable and your customers your greatest advocates.

Become the obvious choice in your industry by building delightful moments and systematically elevating every interaction, process and customer touchpoint.

Book a workshop Get the Delight Guide

What you leave with

The map

Every customer interaction and touchpoint mapped out and scored for the impact it actually has on your customers.

The thinking

Creative ideas for elevating each point, creating delightful moments and delivering all of them systematically.

The roadmap

A phased plan for rolling it out across your business, ensuring that the work you do during the day gets implemented.

Be different

It's a crowded marketplace.

A lot of people are looking for the answers to questions like these.

How do you earn real customer loyalty?

Do you ever feel like a new competitor pops up every five minutes? Competition is healthy, but giving people a reason to come back time and again is critical.

How do you make your customers your greatest advocates?

Many businesses have plenty of customers who are perfectly happy. The problem is that contentment doesn't necessarily translate into mentions. Raving fans do.

How do you get consistent recommendations and referrals?

Getting the odd recommendation can feel much like an accident. It relies on the right people being in the right place at the right time. Getting consistent recommendations, because you are front of mind through utterly delighting your customers, is a smart strategy for growth.

How do you turn customer experience into your greatest differentiator?

Everybody in your industry probably says that they look after their customers. The difference is that customers need to be able to feel it. And that isn't just about over-delivering. It's about being ahead of the game when things go wrong, making your customers feel seen, and delighting them through unexpected everyday interactions as well as the grand gestures.

How do you become utterly unforgettable?

Have you ever felt like there are so many businesses doing what you do, and doing it well, that it's hard to be front of mind? This is exactly where Maya Angelou's famous line comes in, about being remembered for how you made people feel rather than for what you did.

The method

So what is the workshop, exactly?

What it is

Systematically weaving hospitality through every aspect of your business systems, processes and customer interactions.

A process for looking deeply at every point where a customer meets your business, and the creative thinking to work out what ought to happen at each one. We look at it across different levels to really get some blue sky thinking going, whilst anchoring it to your budget.

What it isn't

Merchandise, gifts or novelty gimmicks. A branded tote bag doesn't buy loyalty.

It's also not about finessing your services. Service and hospitality are two distinctly different areas. Will Guidara describes this as service being black and white, and hospitality being colour.

We interpret this as service being something you have to get right to stay in business, and hospitality being what makes people feel seen and valued. It's being human, and sometimes adding the wow, making them feel special and giving them a memorable moment.

Why take the workshop

Caring isn't the same as delivering.

Most of the business owners we meet care a great deal about their customers and work hard at it. The frustrating part is that caring isn't always the same as delivering.

Most people arrive at the workshop able to name ten or twenty touchpoints. By the end of the day they have at least fifty, and usually closer to a hundred.

The other thing that happens is that creativity breeds creativity. Once everybody starts sharing ideas it is amazing what surfaces, and it is one of the things we genuinely love about running these days. We take something new away from every single one.

Pair that with a map you can actually execute and you go home with more ideas than you can use in a year, a clear order to work through them, and a way of making sure you deliver as much as you care, every time.

Two examples

A services business

The moment

A client is waiting for something you are building. A website, a report, a set of drawings. Waiting is completely normal, everybody does it, and almost nobody thinks of it as part of the experience at all.

The move

A cookie arrives in the post with a QR code on the tag. They scan it and land on a page counting down to the day their new site goes live.

Your new site goes live in

11days 00hrs 00mins 00secs

Dead time turned into something they will mention to somebody else.

Eleven Madison Park

The moment

Couples got engaged at the restaurant all the time. Any decent restaurant brings over a glass of champagne, which is perfectly nice and completely forgettable.

The move

Will Guidara walked across the park to Tiffany & Co. and talked them into supplying champagne flutes in their blue boxes. Couples toasted with them, then the glasses were quietly taken away, washed, and handed back at the end of the night in the box to take home.

Engagements were never a surprise. Once he saw it as a recurring moment, it could be planned once and repeated for years.

The workshops

Three ways to bring this into your business.

Unreasonable Hospitality Certified Coach

The public workshop

A full day in a room with owners and operators across different industries. It's often here that the real creativity is born, with different industries bringing different ideas, expertise and problems to solve. The collaboration produces some really interesting solutions.

  • A call beforehand so we know what you need from the day
  • The workshop itself, and your map built during it
  • A follow-up call once you have started putting it into practice
  • The option to stay connected to the rest of the group afterwards
Book a place

The in-house workshop

The same method as the public workshop, but run for your team alone. You have the entire floor and we work with you to go deeper and further, which can include not only your map but how to integrate it into your team and have them take ownership.

  • Groundwork ahead of the workshop, to include: mystery shop, read your reviews, look at your website and go through your customer feedback
  • The Unreasonable Hospitality Workshop
  • Help turning the map into a phased delivery plan
  • Support as you keep developing and implementing the ideas
  • The option to extend it into recruitment, induction and training
Talk to us about it
No charge

The keynote

A talk for your conference, event or team. What unreasonable hospitality is, the story of Eleven Madison Park, and how it applies to any business with customers. Stories of hospitality at its best, and the method behind the map.

  • Suitable for events, membership organisations and internal away days
  • Tailored to the audience in the room
Book a keynote

Pricing for both workshops, including early bird rates, is on the pricing page.

Be delightful. Become unforgettable.

Who you'll be working with

Fifty years of strategic thinking.

We are strategists who between us have spent roughly fifty years working with businesses of every size and shape. Large organisations, local firms, and people running the whole thing on their own.

Photo

Sarah Edwards

Founder, Frog Marketing · Certified StoryBrand Guide · Unreasonable Hospitality Certified Coach

Most of Sarah's work is strategic. She builds messaging and marketing strategy for businesses across a wide range of sectors, through Frog Marketing, which the Financial Times has recognised as a leading UK marketing agency two years running. Where she is at her strongest is the creative end of that work, finding the idea nobody in the room has had yet and then solving the problem of how to make it happen on the budget you actually have.

Photo

Carolyn Boddington

Founder, The Marketing Engine

Carolyn has spent her career building marketing strategies for business owners, from large organisations down to people running everything single handed. Her particular strength is structure. She is the one who takes a room full of thinking and turns it into a sequence you can start working through on Monday morning, rather than a page of good intentions.

Unreasonable Hospitality Certified Coach Certified StoryBrand Guide
  • Licensed to teach the method behind Will Guidara's bestselling book, Unreasonable Hospitality.
  • One of fewer than fifteen Certified StoryBrand Guides in the UK.
  • Frog Marketing recognised by the Financial Times two years running.

People will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

The plan

Your customers should be your greatest advocates.

Our three step plan for delighting your customers and becoming unforgettable is simple.

1

Book a workshop

Choose a public date or have us run one just for your business.

2

Build your delight map

You'll leave with every point where a customer meets your business mapped out, scored and elevated, with a practical plan for integrating it into your business.

3

Delight your customers

Put your plan into action and watch your customers turn into your best advocates.

Book a workshop Get the Delight Guide

Questions

Anything else?

Will this work for my industry?

Almost certainly. The workshop teaches a process, and a way of thinking creatively within it, rather than anything to do with running a particular kind of business. We won't be telling you how to run your clinic, your firm or your restaurant. Hospitality businesses tend to recognise the language fastest, but some of the biggest gains we see are in businesses that had never thought of themselves as being in hospitality at all.

What is Unreasonable Hospitality?

It comes from Will Guidara's bestselling book of the same name. He took Eleven Madison Park to the top of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, largely by elevating every single customer touchpoint in the restaurant and by building what he calls a hospitality-first culture, so that it runs through every part of the business. We have completed the certification and are licensed to teach the method behind it.

Can I just read the book?

Yes, and you should, even if it is only because you like New York, restaurants and a great story. Where the workshop comes into its own is the process and the guidance on creativity, applied entirely to your business.

How long is the workshop, and where is it held?

The public workshop is a full day. We deliver nationwide and the next dates will be in the South West. If you would like one closer to you, tell us and we will see what we can do. In-house workshops are run wherever suits you.

What do I actually leave with?

A complete map of every point where a customer meets your business, each one scored for the impact it has, a set of ideas for elevating them, and a phased plan for putting it all into practice. It is yours to take away and work from.

What if we are already good at customer service?

Most of the people who come to us already are, and that is usually why they come. Service and hospitality are different things. Service is getting it right, which you have to do to stay in business. Hospitality is how you make people feel, and that is where the difference gets made.

Should I come on my own or bring my team?

Either works. Plenty of people come on their own and get a great deal out of the mix of industries in the room. If you want your whole team involved, or you would like a more in-depth look at your business with our undivided attention, the in-house workshop is the better fit.

What happens after the day?

For public workshops there is a follow-up call once you have started putting the plan into practice, and you can stay connected to the rest of the group if you want to. In-house workshops include continuing support as you develop the ideas and get them implemented.

How much does it cost?

Public workshops are charged per delegate. In-house workshops are priced according to how deep you want to go. Keynotes are free. Current rates, including early bird prices, are on the pricing page.