Luka Hocevar Talks Business: 3 Customer Experience Lessons to Level Up

Hey, all—Luka Hocevar here, bringing you effective business knowledge from my years of running a successful multi-location empire! Shoutout to the Vagaro Content Team for allowing me to take over their blog for the next month. Let’s get into it.

I believe that a consistently great customer experience is a superpower and differentiator in the service industry. It’s also what drives retention, word-of-mouth, and referrals, making it a critical piece of your business strategy.

And let’s be real, almost every industry is a service industry!

While I own a gym and have been in the fitness, coaching & gym industry for almost two decades, I’ve found that one of the best ways to learn is to explore other industries. And what better industry to explore customer experience than restaurants?!

But first, it’s important to understand that the average service-based business does not provide a top-notch customer experience. As a matter of fact, it’s less than good, and businesses seem to have a certain cognitive dissonance about it. A large group of businesses were asked if they felt they provided a great customer experience. It turned out that 80%+ said yes. When their customers were surveyed, however, only 8% said the companies provided great customer service! Let’s look at that...

Imagine believing that you're providing excellent customer service while your customers believe it’s not good at all. With that mindset, you don’t make changes—and that is what leads to the service deteriorating from the inside, out.

Here’s some more stats for you:

➡️ The average business will hear nothing from 96% of unhappy clients who experience rude or discourteous treatment.

➡️ 90% of customers who are dissatisfied with the service they receive will not buy and come back again.

➡️ Of the clients who register a complaint, up to 70% will do business with the organization again if their complaint is resolved quickly.

➡️ 68% of clients who stop doing business with a company do so because of company indifference to these complaints.

It’s important to understand that customer service doesn’t only happen when everything works out perfectly. It also happens when something goes wrong, and you have an opportunity to fix it and turn it around for the customer. The customer experience is what you create before any issues arise.

Both are very important. Today, I wanted to share three lessons I learned from the restaurant industry, in particular, that will help you stand out with a great customer experience.

1. Collect the Dots & Connect the Dots: I learned this from one of the greats in the restaurant industry, Danny Meyer (who also wrote one of my favorite business books: Setting The Table). He would also share the acronym ABCD—Always Be Collecting Dots.

Always Be Collecting Dots translates to always collecting and thinking about information from your customers. It’s a short way of getting in the right mindset to listen well. There are an infinite number of dots in the world, but you must notice them to take advantage of them. Every interaction with somebody is a chance to learn about them and make a connection with them. You cannot do either of these without collecting dots. You have to listen. You can’t learn anything about someone else while focusing on yourself.

In the restaurant industry, it may look like listening to a customer about which desserts they love and then surprising them with exactly that at the end of the meal. That would be the connecting the dots part. You listen and learn about your customers, and then you delight them with what matters to them. This, my friends, is what going above & beyond looks like.

I’ll give an example for the gym industry. I had a client that loved soccer, so did his son who played in the youth leagues, and they were supporters of the local pro team. When the client referred a friend to train with me, I got him and his son great seats to one of the pro team’s games. It meant the world to them because it was specific to what they really cared about. And it showed I listened.

I collected the dots, then I connected the dots.

This is a principle and a value, and something you can integrate with strategies and tactics like the ones mentioned above (more on how to do that a little later in this post).

2. Make a WOW Moment Part of Your KPIs: Businesses should track their KPIs, which stands for Key Performance Indicators. In most businesses, these are things like:

✅Total leads and where they came from

✅Consultation sessions set/showed

✅Trials or memberships sold

✅Freezes or cancellations

✅Net members gained vs lost

✅Revenue

Those are some examples of things that are important and a MUST for any business, no matter your industry. What doesn’t get tracked and managed doesn’t grow.

I started with sharing how important the customer experience is for retention, and yet, few have a KPI to track it—until now.

What is a WOW moment? It is defined as:

“A unique, emotionally engaging interaction that goes beyond expectations and remains highly memorable.”

Start by tracking weekly WOW moments in your business and see how it affects the experience, culture, and retention. Also think about rewarding the team members who create the most WOW moments for customers. On a weekly or monthly basis, share the best moments created and shine a spotlight on them so that you build a culture of team members finding creative ways to delight and literally wow your customers. What gets rewarded gets repeated!

3. Use Technology as Your Second Brain: This will help you create individualized, better experiences. When you have a small batch of customers, it can seem manageable to remember things about them, birthdays, special events, etc.

But as your customer base and business grows, this becomes nearly impossible to do. And that’s where technology comes in to become your “second brain.”

I remember Danny Meyer talking about using systems to input the “dots” to be able to know which customer loves what things, their preferences, and anything else that could help the server make decisions.

For example, let’s say John came to the restaurant and ordered a Moscow Mule a year ago, and the server comes up and says: “Mr. Johnson, would you like your Moscow Mule with your preferred ginger beer again?” The customer may be blown away thinking: “How the hell did they remember that?!” But, little do they know, it’s technology that helped elevate the customer experience.

One example from my gym was using a CRM system to note my client's mom’s birthday, as she was really worried about her and her health at the time. When her birthday came around, I sent her mom flowers and gifted her 30 days of coaching with me so I could help her mother with her health through fitness and nutrition.

While her mom did attend some training sessions with me, she didn’t end up continuing as a client. But it still meant the world to my client and delivered a WOW moment that translated into loyalty and solid retention from the daughter, my client.

Now, I know not everyone can realistically carry out gestures like this one, but even the smallest things can carry a lot of meaning. With the right technology you can make it so much easier to collect and connect the dots, creating amazing customer experiences for your clients along the way.

I can’t talk about overdelivering without actually overdelivering for you, so here’s a bonus 4th lesson!

4. Follow the Rule of 95/5: I learned this from Will Guidara who runs Eleven Madison Park, one of the best restaurants in the world. Guidara spent his early career diving deep into the numbers of the business, which later gave him the knowledge and confidence to come up with this rule. Guidara says:

Manage 95% of your business down to the penny. Spend the last 5% ‘foolishly.’ It may sound a bit crazy; in fact, it’s anything but. That last 5% has a huge impact on the guest experience—it’s some of the smartest money you’ll ever spend.

That is how Guidara has made the top lists of the best restaurants in the world, and it’s how you can elevate your business.

Remember, nothing changes if nothing changes, so make sure to apply at least one of these lessons into your business and see how much of an impact it will make. Best of luck! Let’s go!