Travel has been picking up again lately and so I found myself at the Sioux Falls airport a couple of hours in advance of my flight.
I’m not usually there that far ahead of time, but my wife dropped me off on the way to work and I was planning to work in the business lounge while waiting for my flight.
I also don’t usually check a bag, but I had to this time.
Thus, I found myself alone at the ticket counter without an American Airlines employee in sight.
That’s when a janitor came by pushing his cart and said, “They probably won’t be there for another 30 minutes.”
He must have seen the annoyed look on my face, so he explained why and then said that the coffee shop was open and there was a place to plug in my laptop.
I was impressed. He read the situation and gave me a solution.
But it got better.
After I had been sitting for 15 minutes working, that same janitor stopped by the coffee shop and said, “It looks like someone is at the gate now.”
Wow.
I’m pretty sure that none of what he did for me was included in his job description. And I’m pretty sure he was an employee of the airport, not American Airlines, who I was waiting for.
But he clearly felt a sense of ownership that led him to take care of me, the customer.
When I teach companies how to create a remarkable customer experience, the first concept we discuss is time – time is the currency of experiences. This isn’t my concept. It comes from visionaries Joe Pine & Jim Gilmore.
It’s not your product or service that creates the experience. It’s the time your customers spend with you. Honoring the customer’s time means two things:
- Being efficient with their time (time well saved)
- Making their time valuable (time well spent)
This janitor did both. When he was first confronted with my problem, he couldn’t make the gate attendant get there any faster. But he could show me where the coffee shop was.
Then, once the attendant was at the ticket counter, he minimized my wait by letting me know of their arrival.
He honored my time.
If you want to know how well you honor your customer’s time as well as how you perform on the other four components of a remarkable customer experience, just take this short assessment.
Because, as that janitor demonstrated, every member of the team has a part to play in creating a remarkable customer experience.
