You might find wisdom on a men’s room wall, but it’s the ladies’ room where you can find money. That’s the conclusion I came to after writing a column arguing that restrooms tell you what a company really thinks about its employees and customers, a concept I called “The men’s room doesn’t lie.”
Here I was, just trying to kick off a love/hate series on business products and services, and instead I cranked open the faucet of restroom resentments.
Anti-Marketing Rooms
Bad restrooms aren’t just annoyances, they are a kind of anti-marketing, especially among women. (Nine out of 10 responses I received were from women.) Listen to these examples:
“One item that ought to be banned from any company restroom is that annoying toilet-roll stop, which allow you only two precious squares of paper before cutting you off.
“It does not cause us to stop at two squares. It does cause us to spend additional time in the restroom (time that would otherwise be spent working, shopping or whatever activity brought us into the building), cursing you as we wrestle out a sufficient amount of paper.
“Let me add that encountering this set-up in a company you work for is like having the CEO flip you the bird on a daily basis.”
— Tara Davis
“My company is planning a Connecticut River cruise. I am handling arrangements with the cruise company and, as part of my due diligence, I toured the boat, and I did indeed ask to also view the restrooms — for the very reasons you cite in your column. They passed with flying colors.”
— Mark Zampino
Build Better Bathrooms
It’s no wonder that there’s a book called “Skip to the Loo: Bypass big-ticket advertising and build business with better bathrooms” by Linda Wright. She also keeps a Web site at skiptotheloo.com.
Her interest started when she redid the restrooms at the photo lab she owns. She discovered that it did something no marketing effort had accomplished — customers thanked her, even hugged her. They tell her they bring friends in to show them the restrooms, and plan their shopping around a visit to the store.
And even beyond marketing, get this, from Marie Moran: “When I graduated, I had two major job offers. They were pretty much even with respect to the job, but I made my decision based on the cleanliness of their restrooms. Believe me — that did not go over well with my peers (fellow engineers who are focused on their work and could not care less about creature comforts)!”
Moran went on to point out that the company with the lesser restrooms folded within a year.
And that brings us neatly to the bigger issue here: When it comes to customers or employees, there are no small issues. When customers and employees see your ______ (restroom, Web site, phone system, waiting room), they are seeing a picture of what you think of them.
Dale Dauten is the founder of The Innovators’ Lab. His latest book is “(Great) Employees Only: How Gifted Bosses Hire and De-Hire Their Way to Success.”
