Jeff Klein, luxury hotelier, recently published a nice guest post on the New York Times Style Magazine’s The Moment blog. Klein operates The City Club in New York and Sunset Tower in Los Angeles, and in doing so has come to define ‘luxury’ in a very Janusian way:
The word luxury means different things to different people. Some may like to have scripted lines thrown at them. On a service level, luxury comes down to a connection between the customer and the employee. This can be exemplified by something as simple as remembering the customer’s name.
As luxury always depends on how the individual interprets it, customizing an offering to take account of a customer’s individual needs is an excellent strategy for delighting customers and offering luxury that they’ll appreciate. Klein offers a few examples: the maître d’ bringing a diner to his favorite table with his favorite drink already on it, or a housekeeper remembering not to put a homemade brownie on the madame’s pillow because she’s on a diet. Certainly those in the diamond and jewelry business can and should cultivate similar relationships with their customers.