On Saturday, Lauren and I caught a flight from San Francisco to New York City’s JFK airport. Tomorrow is the last investor demo day for Umba Box as part of the 500 Startups summer program.
Our flight was at 3pm and got us into JFK at 11pm. If you haven’t flown into JFK before, it’s actually pretty far away from Manhattan. It took us 30-45mins to get to our hotel by taxi. Once we got to our hotel, I was tired and a little cranky.
We were finishing up checking-in for the room and the guy behind the desk said “And to start off your stay on the right foot, here’s a warm chocolate chip cookie.” I then noticed that he had a warmer-thingy behind the check-in counter filled with cookies. SCORE!
The cookie caught me off guard. It made me smile and feel a little less tired & cranky. It made me feel good about the hotel we are staying and it did start my trip off on the right foot. 🙂
It got me thinking more generally about the web & technology space. We need to do more to surprise & delight our users. We may not be able to give them chocolate chip cookies but there are other things we can do.
Tony Hsieh of Zappos is the class example that everyone likes to bring up. He gave people free overnight shipping, even when they didn’t pay for it.
What are other examples where folks have gone above & beyond and it’s absolutely enamored you with their business?
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 
Hilton Doubletree? I was impressed when I booked a stay there too.