First-Class Treatment
December 22, 2009
People who don’t travel frequently as part of their jobs tend to think that air travel is somehow a glamorous experience. Those of us who do travel regularly know otherwise. But first-class treatment can make travel significantly more enjoyable.
Because of my frequent flyer status on American Airlines, I frequently get to upgrade to first class. I’ll admit that this makes air travel significantly more comfortable. But if you have images of caviar, linen tablecloths, and crystal salt and pepper shakers, let me assure you that this kind of domestic first-class travel hasn’t been the case for some time.
Tough economic times, September 11th, and the general state of the airline industry have reduced the benefits of first-class on all but the longest flights to a comfortable seat, an occasional meal, and a free drink.
But every so often, a really good flight attendant can make the experience special. On flights where a meal or snack is served, the flight attendant will ask each first-class passenger his or her meal preference. Using a sheet prepared with each of their names, the flight attendant will normally ask, “Mr. Smith? Would you prefer the chicken or the fish?” and proceed to dutifully write down each passenger’s selection, hoping that the selection of choices doesn’t run out.
But on one recent flight, it happened in a slightly different way. The flight attendant made her way down the aisle without a tray, paper, or pen, and said, “Mr. Koslowski, welcome aboard! Would you prefer the chicken or the fish? Fish? Wonderful. Thank You. Mr. Jackson? Fish or chicken for you this evening? Chicken? Great!”
And with great interest, I watched her as she did this with each of the 22 first-class passengers in our 757 aircraft, calling each passenger by name and making no notation whatsoever of the passengers’ orders.
Throughout the flight, she continued to call each passenger by name, and remembered what each person was drinking when she asked if they would like a refill.
Besides making us all feel very special, this extraordinary effort had an additional benefit for the flight attendant. American Airlines sends its frequent fliers SOS (Some One Special) coupons that they can use to recognize employees who provide outstanding service. These are particularly valuable to the employees; the last time I checked, they can get a confirmed first-class flight to Europe with just 14 of these!
I give out these SOS coupons regularly to flight attendants, pilots, and ticket, gate, and reservations agents who go out of their way to be helpful. So it was with a smile on my face as we were departing the flight that I watched as three other passengers handed the flight attendant SOS coupons before I had the opportunity to add my own to the stack.
If you figure that the flight attendant probably works three flights a day, you can see how these coupons can add up very quickly. Does the flight attendant make the effort because of the tickets, or is she just conscientious and the coupons are an extra bonus?
I’m not sure, but it doesn’t really matter – the passengers feel special, and an excellent employee is rewarded for her effort.
Look at your own reward and recognition systems and see if they are eliciting and rewarding the behaviors you want to see. Then all of your customers will feel like they’re receiving first-class service.
Bagel with Strawberry Jam
December 17, 2009
Frequent travel can become old in a hurry. But it doesn’t take a lot to make a person feel more at home – even on the road.
Several years ago, as my business and client base had expanded, I found myself in Ottawa, the national capital of Canada. It is a great city to visit and has a lot to offer a traveler.
When I travel to Ottawa, I usually stay at the Westin hotel in the Rideau Center, adjacent to the Byward Market section of town. During this stretch of business, I stayed there quite frequently. As a result, the staff came to recognize me when I checked in and visited the restaurant for breakfast.
While this was impressive in and of itself, what was truly remarkable was what happened six months later when I had the opportunity to visit Ottawa again.
As I approached the front desk, the front-desk clerk greeted me with a big smile and said, “Mr. Rosenberg! We haven’t seen you for a few months; welcome back to the Westin!
Wow! If you think that made me feel special, what happened the next morning surpassed even that. As I entered the restaurant to get my free continental breakfast, Leonard, the restaurant manager, gave me a similar enthusiastic greeting. ”Mr. Rosenberg! Good to see you again! Would you like the usual fresh-squeezed orange juice and a toasted bagel?”
I was speechless. And those of you who know me will appreciate that this is not a common occurrence. Not only did Leonard remember my name after six months, but he actually remembered what I ate for breakfast – right down to the flavor of the jam.
I have returned to Ottawa on business many times since then, and there should be absolutely no doubt in your mind where I stay when I go there. The effort they took to know their customers has created a level of loyalty in me where I don’t think twice about where to stay.
Whether it is remembering your customers’ names, going the extra mile, or simply following up after an order, successful businesses are built on extraordinary customer service and strong customer relationships.
It’s important to remember that sometimes even the littlest details can make a big impression.
The Cancellation Department
December 15, 2009
Technology can be extremely useful when it works. But even when it works well, poor customer service and technical support can make matters extremely difficult.
My cell phone is a both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I travel extensively and it allows me to keep in touch with my office, my clients, and my family. It’s a curse, because inconsistent service, incorrect information, and regular billing errors have caused me to spend about each month on the phone with their customer service department.
Those of you who have attended my programs know which company I use, although I have heard very similar stories from customers of virtually every carrier.
Last month, I was trying to correct a $600 overcharge on my bill. It was fairly late, maybe 10:30 pm when I tried to contact a customer service representative. Fed up with spending ten minutes trying to navigate their “automated assistant,” I hit a random sequence of keys to confuse the system and get routed to an actual person. In a few seconds, I was on the phone with a customer service representative.
But not just any person, I got “Dave,” who was by far the most competent employee of this particular company I had ever spoken with.
He corrected the problem with the bill and explained why the problem had happened. He told me about an issue they were having that made it impossible to accurately post my usage to the web site so that I could manage my minutes. He made a note to follow up with me in a few weeks to make sure everything was working correctly.
Oh yeah, he also recommended a different plan that offered me more minutes at a lower cost than I was paying. I thought I had died and gone to “Customer Service Heaven,” which anyone who knows me will tell you is high praise indeed!
I asked Dave how I was lucky enough to have him as my customer service representative and his answer was quite interesting. ”I don’t work in Customer Service,” he explained, “I work in the Cancellation Department. When people decide to cancel their service, they are sent to me and I do whatever is necessary to keep them with us.”
Now clearly, they had the right person in that job, but I couldn’t help but think that if they had competent people like this answering the phones in the first place, they wouldn’t even need a Cancellation Department!
Study after study has shown that it is more costly to get a new customer than it is to keep the customer you already have. Keep this in mind and be certain that you give the best possible service you can when it really counts – at the moment the problem arises.
What’s a Customer Worth?
December 10, 2009
One of the most serious and costly mistakes companies make is failing to recognize the difference between the value of a customer today and the long-term value of that customer.
Many organizations, when faced with a difficult customer situation may succumb to the tendency to “just let this one go,” allowing the customer to leave rather than make an exception to a rigid policy to accommodate the particular situation.
But this kind of shortsighted approach can have long-term implications on the sustainable viability of the company. For example, a single bad experience with an airline, compounded by their unwillingness to correct the situation, could very easily convince me to avoid traveling with that airline in the future.
Of course, this would be a bad move on the airline’s part, since I am a frequent flyer. A very frequent flyer. At the time of this writing, I’ve earned over three million total miles in the American Airlines’ Advantage program.
Do the math with me based on the following very conservative assumptions:
My average ticket costs $500
I fly twice a month
I work ten months out of the year
I will travel at this level for 20 years
This makes my lifetime value to an airline $500 x 2 x 10 x 20, or $200,000! And, as I said, this is a very conservative estimate. Over a twenty-year period, I’ll almost certainly spend at least twice that amount, and probably more.
The point is that when you are determining the value of the customer – whether in a difficult situation or simply for planning purposes – you must look not only at the value of the current transaction, but also at the long-term cumulative value of that relationship.
Keep this in mind as you look at your customer service policies, or in the future you might find your business grounded!
Pizza Anyone?
December 8, 2009
Some companies sell products that are so special and unique that they almost sell themselves. Other companies sell commodity items that are so commonplace as to be practically boring.
Pizza could be classified as one of these. Large pizza chains use a variety of advertising and marketing campaigns to distinguish themselves from the pack. Dominoes had a guaranteed delivery time. Little Caesar’s offered two pizzas for the price of one. Papa John’s claims that better ingredients make a better pizza.
Does this kind of branding help sell more pizzas? It’s kind of hard to answer that question definitively since there are many other factors that affect gross sales.
A client of ours told us about a small pizza shop in Holidaysburg, PA, that has a unique approach that has shown measurable success.
Once a week they show up at my client’s building at lunchtime with ten pizzas. Nobody ordered these pizzas; they just bring them. When word gets out throughout the building that there are pizzas for sale in the lobby, they are all sold. All ten pizzas. Every week.
I don’t know this for fact, but I would bet money that they do this on different days for different offices in the area.
They demonstrate extremely well that you can’t just wait for business to come to you, sometimes you have to go out and stir things up a bit. Their creative method for creating demand – bringing hot fresh pizzas into a building of hungry employees at lunchtime – yields measurable results, week after week.
Look at your own organization. Are there ways you could be creating demand for your products or services by making them more available to potential customers?
The Ball is Always Right
December 3, 2009
Life is always interesting because you can learn profound lessons in the most unlikely situations. In this case, it was from a tennis lesson during a corporate retreat.
My company offers a wide variety of programs to help organizations improve their performance and effectiveness. By far, my favorite is the “Learning to Fly” corporate retreat, where we introduce leadership and customer skills in the morning and reinforce them in the afternoon on the flying trapeze at Club Med.
During a program I held there a few weeks ago, I arrived a day early to make sure everything was set up properly for the attendees who would be arriving later in the day. When that was done, I headed over for the tennis workshop to try and resurrect a tennis game that has seen very limited action for the last few years.
As luck would have it, I was the only person there, so I got a 45-minute private lesson. As fate would have it, the instructor was a tyrant. No, really, he was! He ran me all over the court because he claimed that I wasn’t shuffling my feet enough when he hit the ball right to me; that I wasn’t shifting my weight properly; and that I was off balance when I hit the ball. (I can assure you that none of these claims were true.)
After a few minutes, I got with the program so he began hitting the balls closer to where I was standing so I could work on the mechanics of my stroke. By mistake, he hit one ball farther away then the others, and I watched it go right by me.
He got annoyed at this (remember, he was a tyrant) and asked me why I didn’t go after the ball. I told him that he didn’t hit the ball where he was supposed to. He laughed at this and said, “No matter where it’s hit, the ball is always in the right place. If it doesn’t come where you expect it to, then you need to move to the ball, otherwise you’ll lose the point!”
And although he was only talking about tennis, his statement had implications that reached far beyond the game.
How many times in life are we faced with a situation where things don’t go the way we expect them to? Where a situation at work unexpectedly complicates our jobs? Where we’re thrown a curve that dramatically impacts our personal lives?
And when this happens, our initial reaction is to just stand and watch, dumbstruck, as it happens, complaining that this wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out, just as I stood and watched as the tennis ball passed by me just out of reach.
Mistake or not; intentional or not; fair or not; when the ball is hit out of reach you have two choices: you can stand there and do nothing, or you can adapt your strategy to the situation and move to where the ball is and give it your best shot.
Remember, the ball is always in the right place. Whether you win or lose depends on how you meet the ball.
The Flash Pass
December 2, 2009
The Flash Pass
Whenever I speak to groups about marketing their products or services, I always stress that, ultimately, it’s about the experience people have when interacting with the company as much as it’s about what they’re actually buying.
And it’s equally important to note that customers are often willing to pay more for a better experience, whether buying something in a store, planning a trip, or retaining professional services. Hey, even my kids – college students both on very limited budgets – hate Walmart so much they’re willing to pay a bit more to shop at other stores with better service.
Ignoring this basic fact of human nature can cost you a small fortune in lost business. So with that in mind, here’s an example of one company that understands this: the Six Flags theme park company.
Six Flags owns and operates 20 locations in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and is working to establish an international presence over the next few years. And one of the keys to their success is recognizing and meeting the needs of guests willing to pay more for a better experience.
And they do this with two different programs. I’ll explain them both in a minute, but first, let’s have a brief review of what happens when you go to a theme park – any theme park.
You get up early, drag the family out of bed so you can be there right when the gates open. You pay more for parking than you thought the park tickets were going to cost, and then you buy the tickets themselves.
As soon as the clock strikes eight, and they let everyone in, there’s a mad dash – kids in tow, their feet barely touching the ground, as you try to get in line for the “premium” rides – the ones everyone wants to get on. And – good for you – you get a good place in line! But what happens next? You go on to the next great ride, where you’re greeted by a line that will eat up at least 45 minutes of your day. And you have five other big rides to go on. Plus you have to get lunch at some point. Sounds like a fun vacation, doesn’t it?
So recognizing this, Six Flags introduced the Flash Pass. When you get to the ride you want to go on, the Flash Pass holds your place in line electronically so you can go on other rides instead of waiting on line. When it’s almost your turn, the Flash Pass device notifies you. The process doesn’t put you at the front of the line, but it lets you go on other rides instead of waiting in line.
The cost? $34.99 per person for the regular Flash Pass, or $64.99 for the Gold Flash Pass that cuts your wait time by approximately 75%. And that’s on top of the $44.99 per person admission price ($29.99 each for children).
But if that’s not enough, they also have VIP Tours that include front-of-the-line ride privileges, valet parking, reserved show seating, meals and snacks, and a private autograph session with some of the characters.
The cost? $249.00 per person. At least this one includes the park admission fee. Still, for a family of four, that’s $1,000.00 of revenue to attach a minimum-wage teenager to your group for the day.
Not a bad return on investment, and certainly a fantastic illustration of offering premium products and services for people willing to pay for a premium experience.
The question on your mind right now shouldn’t be, “Who in their right mind would pay that much money?!” It should be, “What can I offer that would deliver superior value at a higher price?” Answering that question can be as much fun as a trip to a theme park!
It’s All About Choices……
December 2, 2009
It’s All About Choices……
Thanksgiving is a dangerous time, especially if you’re trying to stay in shape. There are simply too many opportunities to eat good food. And then there are too many opportunities to eat leftovers for the rest of the weekend!
With the kids both home from college, we had a full day: brunch at a friend’s house, final preparations for our own dinner, visiting some other friends, then off to see Phantom of the Opera at the Durham Performing Arts Center.
That makes for a very full day. And with all that ahead of us, we certainly would have been justified in sleeping in late that morning. But life is all about choices, and we chose instead to get up at around 6:30 am and participate in the Gobbler’s Run, a 5K (3.1 mile) race to raise funds for the local Boys and Girls Club in nearby Wake Forest.
Okay, three of us decided to get up; our daughter decided to sleep until around 11:00 – even the prospect of a great holiday brunch wasn’t enough to get her up that early!
But there was an added benefit to running: it “created some room” for all the food we were going to eat that day. And we weren’t alone, by the way. Over 1,250 people participated by running or walking in the event, including the 77-year-old father of one of our friends.
The results we get in life, whether about fitness, career, or personal issues, are directly related to the choices we make each and every day. What choices are you making today?
Six-Love
December 1, 2009
Several years ago, my family traveled to Florida to visit my in-laws. I remembered from a previous trip that there was a tennis court, so my wife and I both brought our tennis racquets hoping to find some time to play.
On Saturday morning, my wife decided to sleep in, so I took my racquet over to the tennis courts to see if anyone was there to play. I found three people playing a modified game of doubles and asked if they could use a fourth person to even it up. They said they were almost done, but invited me to play for a bit.
Now I have to point out that this was a retirement community and none of these three men was young. One of them was 86 and had just had a triple bypass operation a few months earlier. Another was in his mid-seventies, and the third one was 67 years old. They all played very well, considering their age.
When the game broke up, I mentioned in passing that I had hoped to play more. The “youngster” of the group approached me and said that he could play one more set of singles if I was interested.
I should point out that this was at a point in my life where I was playing a lot of tennis; and while I wasn’t headed to the US Open any time soon, I had a respectable game.
I smiled to myself and thought, “Sure, I’ll play a set – if he can even last that long!”
About twenty minutes later, the match was over and the score was 6-love (6 games to zero). And I was the one with the zero score. He couldn’t cover the court like I could; he wasn’t hitting the ball as hard as I was; and his serves weren’t as good as mine. But he always seemed to be where I hit the ball, and he always managed to hit the ball over or around me on practically every return.
I have never been so simultaneously humiliated and inspired in all my life!
Since then, when I meet a new colleague, customer, or vendor, I try not to immediately come up with a preconceived opinion of their abilities and strengths, but instead, wait and see what they are able to contribute to any given business situation.
