One Bright Light

It is truly amazing to me how companies seem to daily drop the customer service ball.

Today my wife and I were scheduled to travel to the United States on an American airline (I could go on about the Canadian carriers but I’ll save that for another post). We made an error in timing. Our flight was scheduled to depart from Halifax to New York at 6:20am. We walked up to the check-in counter at 5:30am. The customer service fell off the table at “hello”. The agent said “you are late”. I replied, yes, running a little slow this morning. Immediately she responds with “you are too late for New York - your flight has been cut-off at 5:20 - 60 minutes prior to departure - no exceptions”. We were in shock. I have been doing minimally two flights a year to the US out of Halifax for 18 years and this was a first (this is Halifax after-all not Toronto!). From her, there was no compassion, relational empathy, or effort to work with us - it was all just down right snarly. In fact, she seemed to go out of her way to push our buttons.

The next 3 hours were an overwhelming flood of customer service stumbles and bumbles from on-line agents, web contradictions and mis-information, and agitating voice-activated “automated” phone systems. Finally, as we were at our ultimate breaking point I was connected (after being on hold for 35 minutes) with a phone customer service agent named Cindy. At last, someone with courtesy, relational empathy, and the competence to do her very best to right the sinking ship.

Now, I am not excusing the fact that at the core, what started all this was our fault. We were 10 minutes past the official cut-off.  We are not the first, and in fact there were others facing the same plight behind us in line this very day.  So, a very valuable lesson has been learned by us.  However, we really did not deserve the chaos, run-around, and rudeness that followed and it has indeed left me with a very sour taste in my mouth for air travel and in particular towards this airline.

Is this what we want to ingrain in our customers? Is this the way we like to be treated? Must we frustrate the living daylights out of customers and push them towards the brink of hatred?  All organizations have a combination of front-line and internal customer service interactions.  It is time for each of us to take an assessment of what grade our customers would give our organization. Would ours pass or fail? Failure is not acceptable and should not be an option! What ever happened to putting the customer first, or at least treating them with respect?  It was lost on me today.

As for Cindy…I was so overwhelmed by the contrast she provided.  So, impressed by her professionalism in the shadow of the previous 3 hours.  And in the end, all she really was doing was her customer service job. The difference is this - she gets it! She puts the customer first and treats them with respect.  And as a reward, I asked to speak with her manager - and I gave her a rave review and a glowing commendation.  I told the manager…treat her well, she is one of the best employees your organization has!  Now, she was one bright light in a sea of utter organizational darkness.  Let’s model ourselves after Cindy shall we?