Customer Service Lessons From An Airport Employee
June 18th, 2012 by Diane Conklin under Marketing. No Comments.
Sometimes amazing things happen during our travels, but if you don’t take the time to notice and get excited about it, you might miss it.
On a recent trip, something amazing happened. It was a long day. Up at 4:00am to leave for a long day of flying and connecting flights, no problems, until baggage, where there was a bunch of people still standing around when everybody else seemed to have picked up their bags and left.
It was a curious situation, but the man behind the counter was very much on top of it. He came out and made a couple of announcements and apologized profusely for the bags not being there which had us all curious.
Apparently there was some sort of technical problem in the back, the conveyer belt had stopped and jammed on something. The amazing thing was after two announcements and then apologizing multiple times, all of a sudden, from underneath where all the bags were coming out on the belt, an airport employee pops out.
He had literally pushed every single one of the bags out, there were probably 25 or 30 of us standing there that didn’t have bags yet. He had pushed all those bags manually, by hand, and was literally handing them to the people as they came up to get them, and the gentleman who had made all the overhead announcements was also helping.
This was a great example of customer service. They could have made all of us wait until the belt was fixed, or unjammed, or whatever had happened, or until the entire system was fixed. But that airport employee took it upon himself to actually do something about it, to go above and beyond, and fix the problem in the best way possible at that time, so as not to inconvenience people any more than necessary.
It was one of the highest levels of customer service I’ve seen in a long time.
The marketing message and business lesson, is that we have to think about what our employees and team members are doing that are wowing customers. What are we instilling in our internal clients, in our employees, in our VA’s, and in all of those people on our team doing customer related functions?
What are we instilling in them to give them the confidence and the ability to go out and do those kinds of things on their own that make a huge difference for our customers and for clients?
There were a lot of people on that plane that were tired, who had been traveling all day, and who just really wanted to get their belongings and leave. Nobody was complaining loudly, or even really had a chance to become irate, because of the level of customer service from the airport employees.
We should all think a little bit more about what we empower our employees to do in this regard and if we are not doing enough, how can we empower them to do more of the things that make great impressions on our clients and all those who do business with us?
As tired weary travelers who had been on the road for a few days and had a few more to go, it was really, really refreshing and made a huge difference in everyone’s day.
Hopefully, you are doing things like this in your business and your employees are also doing things for you, and on your behalf.
You should test, check, and measure, and find out what needs to be done, so you can empower people, give them a chance to stretch and grow, and see what kind of miracles your team is producing for your customers and clients.
