What's your Priority?

It’s been a crazy travel kind of week.  Started with a delay due to tornadoes in Nashville.  Then ran into some freezing rain in Indianapolis.  There was fog in Charlotte and heavy rain in New York.   I handle those travel challenges pretty well.  You can’t blame the airlines for the weather.

So, I guess I wasn’t that surprised when I got to my final destination for the day and my luggage was missing.  I knew better than to check a bag, but sometimes it’s necessary.  I really wanted my black boots and my brown boots and winter clothes take so much more room than summer clothes.  The fact that I was flying USAir meant that my expectations were already so low that it was going to be extremely hard for me to be disappointed.  USAir managed to surprise even me.

You know the drill, you stand in baggage claim and your hope diminishes with every turn of the carousel.  Then you go to the baggage office and file a report. When Joe, the agent, realized my mileage account was almost as big as the national deficit, he smiled like a hyena.  “Ms. Swann – you’re a PRIORITY.”  I beamed, too.  I like being someone’s priority.   We had both won the lottery. 

USAir was ready to blow my socks off with their new lost baggage reporting system-totally green and high tech.  They scanned my receipt, instantly gave me a claim file and took down the address where my bag would be delivered.  Agent Joe was so proud of the investment his employer had made in this new lost baggage system that he couldn’t wait to share it with me.  I was almost impressed, but he forgot one thing.  He forgot to be sorry.

I wanted him to feel my pain.  I didn’t have my vitamins or my probiotics so I was most likely going to catch a cold from all the plane germs.  I didn’t have a change of clothes, so I was going to have to see an important new client in dirty, wrinkled travel clothes.  I didn’t have makeup or hair products, and that didn’t really matter because I’m blessed with complete natural beauty, but a little mascara is always nice.  I didn’t have deodorant; “TMI”, right?  Joe almost acted excited that they had lost my bag so I could experience their new system.

Here’s the other thing that was wrong.  With all their technology, they couldn’t communicate with me where my bag actually was or when I would get it.  And as much as I loved his sexy system, that was all I really wanted to know.  Besides, I was a PRIORITY.  He told me so!

The airlines are first of mind when we think about bad customer service.  But let’s face it; we all have some of this mentality in our organizations, right?  Like a Y that doesn’t have the money to invest in online registration, so they require members to come stand in long lines to sign up for programs.  The Y knows that’s going to upset people, so they serve refreshments, hire some clowns to make balloon animals and try to make the “fail” feel better.  The refreshments are nice, but what the member really wants is to know that very soon you’re going to move into the new century and let them sign up for day camp from the comfort of their own home.  They’ll be glad to forego your cookies and balloon animals for that convenience. 

Once when I was upset at the lack of quality in my youngest son’s swim lessons and went to converse with the aquatics director, she smiled and said, “No, problem!  We have a money back guarantee and I am empowered to refund all your money on the spot today.”  Fail.  I didn’t want my $45 dollars.  I wanted my child to learn to swim. 

Today I saw a young mother of two come to visit the Y for the first time since joining two weeks ago.  She had bundled the baby, wrestled the toddler, and summoned the courage to put on her exercise clothes and take the first step toward getting healthier.   Yay!  She is our priority.  But when she got to the Y, child watch was full and she was turned away with a chart that shows the best days to actually get your child in and a list of other activities she could do while she was here anyway.  Things like take them swimming (ever swam with a 3 month old and a 2 year old?); go to the playground (great fun, but probably not a great option in January in the Midwest); run around the open gym (because we all know pickup basketball game guys love it when your toddler crashes their court time).   What was unspoken by the staff but loudly heard by the member and me was:  “Are you crazy?  It’s Monday at 9 a.m.  Did you honestly think you were going to waltz in here and get to work out and get your kids in child watch?  That’s not how it works.  Yes, I realize we are failing you right now, but come on!  It’s Monday at 9 a.m. in January.  Work with us here!”

It’s high season at the Y right now.  Thousands are flocking to you because they want to be healthier.  They want to feel better.  They want to look better.  They know they are supposed to eat right and exercise, but they know they can’t do it alone.  They need you.  They are your priority.  You told them so in your marketing.

It’s great to have a plan for when you fail them when the class is full, the pool is down, the instructor doesn’t show and the parking lot overflows, but be sure you spend the majority of your time, energy and resources strategizing how not to fail. What USAir is really saying with their high-tech-lost-baggage-system is: we know we aren’t capable of doing our job so we are going to invest in making the experience of us screwing up as painless as possible for you.  Not cool.

My lost baggage story had what I’m sure the USAIR baggage tracking system categorizes as a happy ending.  26 hours later, right before I left the East Coast to fly to the West Coast, my bag was delivered to the hotel.  What the record won’t show is the horror I felt at standing in front of a client with flat gel-less hair; wrinkled black pants, mascara-free lashes and a belly growing bad bacteria by the minute without my probiotics to fight back.  Never mind the opportunity lost to rock my black boots!

Empower your staff to find solutions to the issues not excuses.  And when you do lose that occasional proverbial bag, teach your staff to say, “I’m sorry,” and to really feel it. That’s the best recovery of all.  That’s how you treat a priority.