I didn’t write or post a message yesterday – it’s only the 2nd time in all these years that’s happened. I was travelling and a poorly handled situation caused my trip to take 12 hours longer than expected – time when I would normally be writing and posting. It happened on Southwest, an airline I fly enough to have earned 1,000,000 reward miles – you might assume from that I’m a fan of their unique customer service practices and style. But yesterday they failed (for the first time in my experience) to make the effort to make a bad situation acceptable. I know from my years in the gaming business that in the service sector it’s hard to make a “no” into what’s perceived as an acceptabe situation. They used to be able to do that, but yesterday they didn’t. Empathy and a smile work better than wagging your finger – figuratively and literally. I was stunned initially, but today I’m disappointed. Because something that’s been so unique for so long, and what’s turned great customer experiences into extreme loyalty, may be changing. For the worse. For the bottom line. There are too many examples where something like that turns into a slippery slope for an industry-leading company. Without making the effort to create win-win customer experiences in the best and worst of service efforts, your team’s skills are nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t. Put in the necessary time and effort to make things right today.
Angela Lee Duckworth (born 1970): American academic, psychologist, and popular science author.[1]
[1] She is the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies grit and self-control. She is the founder and former CEO of Character Lab, a not-for-profit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development.
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