Good Service Is the Feeling It Gives You
It’s not just what you do. It’s how you do it.
Back before the mega-merger I was partial to United Airlines because they went where I went most often: Chicago, Denver, Milano. One time, though, I had to fly Continental to Charlotte because United’s schedule didn’t work. Going there it was the same old routine. No problems, nothing special. Coming home though, I had an experience that led to the subject of this note. An epiphany about service and what it means. I got to the Charlotte airport two hours early, of course, then it was hurry up and wait, at security, at the gate, on the jetway; excuse me, excuse me, lifting the carry-on up into the overhead and finally sit, fastening the seat belt and looking down at my wrist to see I've lost the cufflink from my left sleeve. The Tiffany ones, 14k gold ovals with NH my parents gave me for Christmas some years before. Shoot up from my seat and jostle back through the oncoming line, panicky searching around where I’d been sitting in the waiting area. No luck.
“Sorry sir, we gotta go," the ground crew was saying while I am cursing under my breath.
"What happened?" asked a concerned-looking crew member as they began to close the plane door behind me. I told her.
She said, "Let me call maintenance to see if anyone picked it up, hon.”
The plane revving up, I returned to my seat, despondent, and after a few minutes I looked up to see this happy-faced attendant coming toward me, holding out the gold cufflink. "Maintenance found it,” she said. “They'd taken it back to the office, but someone ran it down to the gate and passed it through the window to the captain. And here it is." This was like a religious experience. Through the window to the captain? I didn't know you could open plane windows. I was expecting her to say, "So sorry sir. Nothing we can do." The experience converted me. It was Continental religion from that moment.
So. What exactly was it that made me abandon United and my Premier status and all those frequent flyer miles to become a Continentalist? The cufflink — I still wear it — is a reminder of the extra effort of course, but more memorable is the look of happy triumph on the attendant’s face as she handed it to me. It made her happy to help me. It had created some bond between us, my crisis and her assistance. She was proud of herself, of her company, but what’s more, it erased the barrier between “customer” and “server.” The lost cufflink was not only my problem, it was Continental Airline’s problem too. We were in it together.
And that’s the thing about good service. It’s not the maître d’ coming to ask you if your food is OK; it’s not the things you expect to happen happening; it’s not the piece of candy on your pillow or the apple at check-in; it’s a feeling of We’re In This Together. And it’s true whether you have done everything right, like the flight attendant in this story, or whether, like me, you mess up someone’s order. Good service is caring. Fixing a problem is a bonus.