RSR’s analysts are seeing a few themes for 2011 come into sharp relief. Nikki does a nice fly-by in her overview this week. I’m going to take a short swim in Customer Centricity 2.0 and highlight some old-fashioned and new-fangled differences. I’m going to talk about a Winner (with a capital W) — the W Hotels. And then I’ll talk about a couple of also-rans, whose initials most definitely are not W.

For the past two years, RSR has made the W Times Square our NRF Big Show hotel. Mostly we’ve done so because the rooms are a reasonable size, the beds reasonably comfortable, and the location reasonably close. I’ve made note of all the W branding, and how the company promises to serve, but I’m always so busy, it’s hard to quantify that part of the experience. All that changed when I arrived at the airport at the end of that long, tiring trip to NY. When I arrived at the security checkpoint, I realized I’d left a brand new laptop in my hotel room. Having grown up in New York, I had little to no expectation that the machine would ever be seen again. I called the hotel as soon as I’d finished undressing on the security line. The concierge who answered the phone (Maxwell Mbecah, you get big props here) sent someone up to my room straight away, and promised to call me right back. In 10 minutes, I got my call. He had my laptop in hand, and if I’d give him my credit card number, he’d send it to me either overnight or 2^nd day air. I opted for overnight, and he said he’d send it out the next morning.

That seemed reasonable. After all, it was already 4 pm. Imagine my surprise when at 9 am the next morning, FedEx appeared at my door, with a very well packed laptop, ready to be used again. I called Mr. Mbecah to thank him for expediting and he said “I realized that this was important to you, so I got it out before the end of the day. “ Man, that is service, coupled with Fed Ex’s ability to deliver. Of course, I had to write a letter of praise to the General Manager, and got this back in reply:

As they used to say on Sesame Street, all this great service was brought to you by the letter W. The W Hotel is working to make W synonymous with service. Loyalty-wise, my partners might have to kill me before I’d stay at another hotel in midtown next year.

Meanwhile, back in Miami, I had a serious splash of cold water thrown on me when trying to deal with a couple of traditional retailers. I’ll keep it brief, but it shows how even the best technologies can serve no useful function at all, unless they are coupled with a sense of responsibility and a culture of customer care.

First — I needed an outfit, badly, and in a hurry. I returned on Wednesday night, and had a very big deal cocktail party to go to on Friday night. On Thursday, I did my web due diligence and found something I liked at a major retail department store. No time to have it shipped, so I called the closest store to find out who might have it locally. I was routed to the correct department, but the sales person really didn’t have much interest in talking to me. I persisted and insisted (since I knew she could find out who had it right on the register in front of her) and after a 10 minute wait, she was able to tell me the product was located in a different store. Not too, too far away…so I called that store, in Dadeland Mall. After six tries, the phone operators could not get me to the right department. I hung up before waiting to see if the 7^th time was the charm. All the high-tech pieces were in place. The suit was in the store somewhere. But the phone system and attached humans couldn’t get me close. I figured if they couldn’t find the department, they’d NEVER find the suit. I wore something out of my closet.

Then — the handle on my refrigerator broke. I’m pretty handy for an old broad, and was able to find the part easily enough online, but couldn’t quite figure out how to install it. I decided it was worthwhile to pay for a service call. I dialed the 800 number for the retailer/manufacturer and clearly ended up in some foreign land (and I mean that in every sense of the word). The script this customer service rep followed was about getting me to buy insurance on my refrigerator. I diverted the script, had her put the part number in the order, and arranged for the call.

When the serviceman showed up the next day, he had no part with him. He told me this was by design…that the goal was for me to buy a two year insurance plan, and he was sorry, but he was not allowed to bring anything with him. I got irritated by that. He understood, told me where else I could buy the part, showed me how to install it, told me to cancel the service order, and left. I gave him $20 for his trouble, and I arranged to have the part overnighted to me from another vendor. I saved about $150 over the insurance cost and about 4 days of time. Here, once again all the technology was in place. I found the part quite quickly. I was ready to buy. But the retailer was more interested in what he wanted to sell than in what I wanted to buy. What did he end up getting? NOTHING. The repairman was helpful to me, but did nothing for the brand of his company.

The message here is short and sweet (after a long story). Technology can take you half-way to Customer Centricity 2.0. But you’ve got to CARE about your customers. Tony Hsieh (Zappos) has made a lot of money and made a lot of customers happy with that philosophy. The W has managed to make me interested in something other than the softness of its beds. Those other two retailers? They’ve lost me. And likely they will complain they got no ROI on their expensive tech initiatives. Ironically, we seem to need Chief Customer Experience Officers to bring common sense back to retailing. So readers, I ask you this. How does your company rate?