Conveyors Lower Barriers to Entry on the Slopes
December 2006
Written by: David Drickhamer
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Today's conveyor lifts offer a lesson in creating a positive customer experience.
Seen through the coldly practical eyes of a material handling professional, skiing is the ultimate exercise in futility. Everyone who rides up the lifts eventually ends up right back where they started, repeating the cycle over and over again until they clomp back into the lodge from exhaustion or exposure to the elements.
I recently spent a few days teaching my 7-year-old son how to ski. On my part I had a chance to get in touch with my inner more patient self. On his part it was a lesson in overcoming fear and frustration. At one point he moaned that his shiny red skis wouldn't "listen" to him. Convinced that they were defective, he demanded that we take them back to the rental place. But by the end of the second day he was riding the high-speed chair lifts up the
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mountain and snowplowing down the long, winding beginner trails to the bottom, and he had decided skiing was his favorite thing to do in the whole world. Mission accomplished.
It's been a few years since I spent much time on the beginner hills. On my first day of skiing I ruined a pair of gloves and left the bunny slope with sore shoulders and arms from being jerked and dragged up the hill by the rope tow. It was a grueling day but I was hooked. Looking back it's easy to see that subjecting new customers to such misery isn't the best business model. Most people who spent the day struggling to get up the hill, let alone down, would never consider hitting the slopes again.
What's changed? If you haven't been skiing lately, since the early 1990s many beginner slopes have been outfitted with people-moving conveyors. The modular units, the surfaces of which are at snow level, feature continuous anti-slip belts that grip the slippery bottomside of skis and snowboards. All that beginners have to do is shuffle up to the bottom, step on and they're whisked up the hill.
The conveyors, generically known as "magic carpet" lifts after the company in Denver that first developed and installed them (www.magiccarpet.rmce .com), require a bit more maintenance than rope tows, T-bars and other surface lifts. For example, they have to be covered up at night to keep off snow that would make the conveyor belt as slick as the hill.
From the perspective of ski area managers, the positive experience of new skiers and future revenue provided by the conveyors more than make up for any maintenance requirements. In almost every business repeat customers and their positive referrals contribute a significant percentage of sales, and a higher percentage of profits.
I share these observations as we head into the heart of winter and holiday vacations because it offers a stark example of the difference that an investment in new handling equipment--the people-moving variety in this case--can have on the customer experience. Whether it's IT systems, order fulfillment processes or packaging, when prioritizing investment opportunities for 2007, in addition to cost savings and efficiency gains, target improvements that customers will notice. Such investments can really pay off in the long run.
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