List
Print This Post Print This Post

Disclaimer: I don’t have shares in the company, or discounts, or commissions! No place I know can match Chateauform  (http://chateauform.com)  as venues for meetings. But you need to live in France (or travel there) to enjoy the most. There are a few of them in other countries.

Chateuform is an all-inclusive hotel and meeting venue dedicated to business. Every single aspect of the use is included in the price, form your impeccable bedroom to the projectors in the room. In fact, Chateauform venues are ‘houses’ (big ones!) managed by a family (and plenty of staff) who would greet you at reception personally. Well, there is no reception as such, just one of the rooms to welcome you. Because it’s a ‘house’, you are free to roam and serve yourself. (A client of mine said, I wish my house…)

Espresso coffee machines everywhere, bar well stocked (no service, remember, its your house, grab the gin yourself) and every single detail worked out.  You need water for your bedroom? OK, there are baskets with bottles in every corner, corridor or stairs, or perhaps in a basket in front of your room. It’s very sunny outside, perhaps too sunny? Well, there are those baskets on the floor full of sunglasses of all colours and shapes – serve yourself- and those other baskets with hats of all sizes – pick one that suits you and go out. For winter, there will be piles of blankets in front of the patio doors. In the business meetings area – where every service is included, from sound system to projection, to flipcharts to electronic boards – there will be a photocopy machine. No, no code. Dozens of wireless handsets around ‘the house’ will get you anybody to come and help you if needed, on anything, any time.

Your breaks area may have constant supply of drinks and food, not at particular times ‘in your agenda’. At lunchtime there is a starter buffet but you go to the kitchen and talk to the chefs personally about your desired dishes. Serve yourself any wine, there are all lined up.

Anything you need, from an umbrella to games in the gardens, to extra notepads, is there in front of you, included in the price. The one Chateauform I have stayed recently had also a gym. In the Chateuform spirit you would find a selection of trainers at the door. Of course! There was also a collection of green garden boots, all possible sizes, in front of the garden doors

Founded from people from Club Mediterranee – for those who know this firm- they have managed to re-create the same ‘all-inclusive-it -is-your-house’ atmosphere for business. Attention to the customer and personalized treatment is simply exquisite. I have been brought breakfast to a meeting room by somebody from the kitchen in a golf cart when I was too late, and found my international newspaper outside the same meeting room in a break. All this is done with zero levels of silly servility. It’s just…normal.

And I have two questions. One, why on earth has this not been copied by million of other business venues, where we have to suffer a de-personalized and robotic treatment, and paying extra for some third grade biscuits and bad coffee? Two, why is ‘customer service’ the easiest think to do, that does not need to be (re)invented, but also the most difficult thing to find?

Customer focus is, in many places, all slip services and no substance. We all know that. If you want to study a culture of customer-centrism, or have a meeting about customer focus, go to a Chateauform place.  Even if you have to fly in.

Keep up with the Daily Thoughts

Twitter Email

Would you like to comment?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To search my website, please use the form below.

  Daily Thoughts

September 27th, 2023

Redefining Talent Wealth

The war on talent McKinsey consultants started it with a book of the same title. By focusing on what it […]

September 8th, 2023

What I Learnt From The Monks: A Little Anthropology Of Leadership And Space On One Page

My friends, monks of a Benedictine monastery in the Highlands, Scotland, spend most of the time in silence. I mean, […]

August 23rd, 2023

Can We Rescue DEI From Its Trap (The Label)?

Most of the problems and challenges in organizations, together with most of the solutions, are behavioural in nature. It’s about […]

August 10th, 2023

Restructuring to force collaboration, is likely to create more anxiety than collaboration. Structural solutions for behavioural problems hardly work.

Sometimes restructuring is done with the intention of solving a collaboration problem. ´A people´ don’t talk to ´B people´; if […]

July 18th, 2023

The ‘Impossible To Disagree With’ School Of Management

‘Good leaders have empathy, respect employees and set the example. If you want to change things, you need to have […]

June 29th, 2023

Large scale change is not small scale change repeated many times. Small wins repeated are lots of small wins.

Large scale change, as a series of cascading small scale interventions (often under the philosophy of ‘small wins’) has dominated […]

June 6th, 2023

Culture change is not long and difficult. But we make it so…

I suppose the question is how long is long and how difficult is difficult? In general, business and organizational consulting have […]

May 19th, 2023

Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]

May 4th, 2023

The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]

April 21st, 2023

´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]

April 14th, 2023

Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]

April 11th, 2023

Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]

April 5th, 2023

3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]

March 29th, 2023

A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]

March 16th, 2023

Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]

March 9th, 2023

A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]

March 2nd, 2023

Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]

February 24th, 2023

A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]

February 20th, 2023

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]

February 7th, 2023

Write a script, not a strategic plan

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]

January 26th, 2023

3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

January 10th, 2023

Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]

December 23rd, 2022

Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]

December 16th, 2022

Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]

December 5th, 2022

Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]

November 25th, 2022

Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]

October 31st, 2022

Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]

October 24th, 2022

‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]

October 14th, 2022

Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]

October 7th, 2022

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]