Flying is for Pigeons
Grab a copy of your company’s organizational structure. I don’t care if there is one employee or 100,000 — are customers even noted on it?
If they are, where does their ‘box’ appear? At the bottom of the page? At the top? How about in the middle — where the entire organization can focus on them?
Think about it — if your company isn’t in the business of meeting the needs of your customers, you don’t have a business. Or you won’t for much longer. Because that is the new reality for institutions when they collide with social media.
Right now I am suffering through one of the worst service experiences an American consumer can face: travel. From the moment I checked in online using Northwest’s (Northworst) system, which will only let me confirm seating for the trip within 24 hours, but not the return trip scheduled for later in the week, to the boring looong flight where I was asked to pay for my food and not even offered the option of entertainment for a 4 1/2 hour flight to the 45-minute wait for my luggage which seems to be the defacto time in any airport in the US, to the 30-minute wait in the scorching hot desert sun while I waited for a cab that reeked of smoke that drove way too fast to the hotel where check-in that stole another 30 minutes from my life. Then I was summarily told that the room wouldn’t be ready for at least 4-5 hours…and this is normally what we all experience whenever we travel. Now think about how much a typical business trip or vacation costs and compare it to other experiences that cost much less money yet deliver far greater satisfaction.
There are millions of message boards, forums, blog posts and comments that all support the singular fact that there is a substantial problem here, yet no company is rushing to fix it. Because they are still working with the old organization chart model in mind that doesn’t wave red flags and tell them they have a problem. But for a nimble competitor with a service-based mentality, this situation represents a game-changing opportunity and deliver a truly exceptional experience for consumers.
