Mad River Behavioral Health

One day, several years ago, I was up on a mountain on a warm, sunny September day.   A butterfly came to visit me. It landed on me, stayed on or around me for a couple of hours.   While the butterfly was visiting, two other people came to talk with me.  The butterfly visited with them too.   This was a difficult period of life for me.  I experienced the butterfly visit as a brief act of kindness, a good deed done by the butterfly.

 I proposed to the president of a New England ski resort that  a Money Back Guarantee be field tested on non-holiday, non-weekend days in January and February.  The guarantee would be limited to equipment failure. If the resort’s equipment failed while the mountain was open,  customers impacted by the failure would be eligible to request a refund if they were dissatisfied.  Equipment failure is a customer experienced defect, a relational discourager.  I proposed that the resort’s maintenance team implement a proactive preventative maintenance program to sharply reduce equipment failures, reducing the number of defects the customer’s encountered.  I proposed that the resort would be able to self-fund this guarantee by adding $1.00 to the price of every ticket sold.  In researching money back guarantees, companies  (not ski resorts) that offer them can charge significantly more than competitors for the same product or service, in some cases 300...

  A Typical New England Ski Area  *** Customers flow through this cycle beginning with “select your resort” to visit.  There are many ski resorts in New England to pick from.  ~ Why would they pick yours? Why might they not?  In general, once they choose to ski at your resort, they enter your Macro Cycle. There are steps you can control and steps you cannot control.  1. Travel to your location (no control) 2. Embarkation (arriving, off-loading, parking, etc.) 3. Base Lodge 4. Purchase Ticket (unless pass holder) 5. Rentals 7. Lessons 8. Lift Operations 9. Snow (making, grooming, etc.) 10. Weather (no control) 11. Disembarkation (pack up, get car, load gear, drive away) Each step is a potential point of contact and an opportunity for the customer to be satisfied or disappointed.   While you cannot control the travel experience, it does impact how the customers arrive.  Are they stressed / not stressed when they first enter your zone of responsibili...