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Let’s say you work for a nondescript, middle-of-the-road airline.
I will forgive you if you don’t look up when I address you at the counter before take-off. Forgive me, though, if I roll my eyes as I turn away.
And when I ask you for the second time if you would check to see if I can move from my middle seat to an aisle or window seat—because I didn’t hear your muffled reply the first time—and you cop an attitude… I’m mostly okay with that, too. Air travelers are so high maintenance!
Once we’re in the air, you promise headsets to watch the movie on the 3-hour flight. I think the cost is $5.
A few minutes later, you say that your operations folks forgot to put the headsets on the plane and that you’ll leave the movie on even if we can’t hear it.
I grouse for a minute or two, but then I say to myself, “Well, that’s today’s airlines.”
It’s no fun being in the middle of an C-plus organization. Or being near the top of one, for that matter.
Customer service is drudgery when your brand stands for nothing. And when you are only one of an army of nondescript workers trying to earn a decent living at an average company in an industry that is on its heels.
No doubt, it’s just a job. It pays the bills, maybe provides some insurance. You hope you don’t lose it.
Most of us don’t work for Under Armour or Apple or Google or some high-flying nonprofit creating entrepreneurs in Asian villages. We work for decent organizations, but dynamic or entrepreneurial they’re not. They’re not the leader in much or of much.
So how do you do “remarkable” work at merely a slightly above average place?
Many folks think that “when I find the right organization that is really going somewhere – then I’ll give it my all.”
But the old adage is true: Your organization cannot make your self. You must bring your self to the organization. That’s especially true in a C-plus firm. A C-plus organization needs its ordinary folks to attempt to make the honor roll.
Okay, now I sound like a aging motivational speaker with too much hair gel.
Even if you’re in a moribund setting, for executives and middle managers alike, you must learn to swim upstream. A leader always swims against the current, no matter what grade your organization gets.
You can start by looking your customer in the eyes when he asks for a window seat, even if you know already that the flight is full.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Dave,
The airlines are a great – and well deserved – target for demonstrating poor customer service. They’re good at it because they practice it every day.
What an arrogant way to do business.
Wouldn’t you like to run a business where, every day, you knew precisely how many customers you would have?
And you already have their money.
If your customers change plans for any reason, you take more of their money. But if you change the plan for any reason you don’t refund anything.
That’s a pretty good deal for you.
Because the airlines have a lock on travel they don’t seem to care what their customers think. Where else can the customers go?
The face of an airline – of any business – is not the PR department, or Corporate Communications, television commercials, or the CEO. It’s the person standing in front of the customer.
Your comments all reflect what some of those individuals did to you. And your reaction was the negative one you shared with us.
It would have been easy for each of them to be “nice”, and the different behavior would have resulted in a positive reaction from you.
I think the lesson for the airlines and for all of us is a simple one. It’s just as easy to be “nice” as it is to be “nasty”. It’s just a matter of choice, and we all get the chance to make those choices every day.