A couple of things that confer competitive advantage on a service provider could be referred to as intangibles, even though they are. These intangibles are not soft variables. They are commercial variables. Businesses that understand this build a layer of competitive advantage that their competitors cannot easily replicate, because most of their competitors are not even looking at this level.

There is a dimension of the physical customer experience that separates the memorable from the forgettable: ambience. The feel of the space, the quality of the light, the temperature of the room, the arrangement of furniture, and the cleanliness of surfaces, floors, and facilities. Ambience should not be confused with luxury.

The two are not the same. Ambience is not about expensive fittings or elaborate interior design. It is about intentionality, the evidence that someone has thought carefully about what it feels like to be in this space.

Some years back, my wife was admitted to one of the leading hospitals in Nigeria. During this period, I was going to the office from the hospital. The room she was admitted to was like a hotel room. Except for the medical equipment in the room, the room could go for a 4-star hotel room. I said humorously to a friend that if not for the absurdity, it is a good place to stay permanently. Of course, we laughed it off. However, there are some salient and serious points from that funny statement. The level of comfortability experienced by customers when they come to your office environment determines if they will come back or not. Having an office environment that turns people off makes you lose customers to your competitors.

I used that hospital as an example of a comfortable ambience but there are some hospitals you dread going to because of the sight of events. I am sure you have seen hospitals children go to and forget themselves with the toys made available to them. A child was taken to a hospital different to the one his parents usually take him to. He said to his mum that he prefers coming to the latter one than the former one. He went further to say the nurses in the former hospital usually shout at children, but it is not so in this other one. That child can make his mother change from one hospital to the preferred one.

Starbucks did not become a global phenomenon because it served the world's best coffee. Blind taste tests have consistently shown that many consumers, when served coffee without branding, prefer the taste of Starbucks’ competitors. What Starbucks sold and continues to sell is an experience of the place. The warmth of the store design, the deliberate acoustic environment, the specific colour palette, and the smell of fresh coffee as you walk in.

These were not accidental. Howard Schultz described his vision as creating a third place: somewhere between home and the office where people felt comfortable spending time. Every element of the physical environment was engineered towards that feeling. The result was a company worth over $100 billion, built in large part not on coffee, but on atmosphere.

In Nigeria, Chicken Republic and Domino's Pizza understood very well in their early days that the ambience of the outlet mattered as much to urban Nigerian consumers as the food itself. Clean, air-conditioned, well-lit environments, well tidied convenience as well as functional seating and clear visual branding communicated something important in markets where inconsistent service environments were the norm. That communication, delivered through the physical space before any meal was ordered, was a significant driver of customer preference and return visits.

I would like to separate cleanliness from the broader ambience conversation because it deserves its own treatment. In a service business, the cleanliness of your environment is not primarily a hygiene compliance matter. It is a brand statement. It is a direct, visible, undeniable communication of your standards and by extension, of how seriously you take the business of serving your customers.

A dirty restaurant does not just fail a health inspection. It tells every customer who enters it something about the kitchen they cannot see. There are restaurants I stopped going to because I see a house fly around. The way your waiting area is depicts the image of the company. A hospital corridor that is visibly clean communicates clinical competence before a doctor has spoken a single word. A hotel room that is immaculate tells a guest that this organization cares about detail, which is precisely the reassurance a guest needs before they sleep in an unfamiliar bed. Cleanliness is not hygiene. It is brand communication.

Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.