Do You Want To Win Government Business?
Midnight Friday, Midway
Airport - I arrived home to Chicago exhausted after teaching a class and took
the trek downstairs to the baggage claim. After about a half hour of watching
other passengers collect their bags, say hello to their families and happily
begin their weekend in the windy city, I realized that my bag was not going to
appear.
I began to panic because I only had one day at home to do my laundry and hit the road again Sunday morning. I had no time to worry about my baggage.
I walked over to the service desk, which had three airline employees. You could tell by their faces that they get a tongue lashing on a regular basis and they prepared for my opening line. "My bag is not here."
We walked through the exercise of describing the bag from a series of photos and I began to fill out some paperwork when one of the employees walked in with my bag.
My luggage looked like it had caught fire or something exploded from the inside of it. I gasped and asked, "What happened?"
She said, "It fell off the conveyor belt, got wedged underneath and I found it being demolished by the conveyor belt. The burns are from the belt." I could see my new suit, burned and hanging out of the five inch hole it made.
I took a breath and asked, "Now what?" She left and returned with a brand new bag, which looked exactly like mine. She instructed me to unpack my bag and repack my belongings into the new bag. She asked me to separate my damaged items.
My damaged inventory was one skirt from one suit, pants from another suit and a bottle of vitamins. I wrote down my losses on a claim check while I shook my head, "I just bought these clothes. This is very upsetting, but I'm thankful it wasn't worse."
Being about 12 midnight on a Friday night, I expected the customer service person to give me a claim check and either ask me to send in a letter or an email; or call a 1-800 number to make a claim.
That's not what happened. She looked at the items I claimed, looked at my estimated value on the items and hand wrote a check in the whole amount.
In five minutes, the entire situation was resolved and my anger was completely gone.
I learned a valuable lesson from this experience.
As Sales Managers and Owners, we need to empower our front line customer service representatives, project managers, and help desk technicians to resolve issues immediately.
By doing so, we are letting go of our "management" control which comes with a little risk for our company, but we're also giving them the power to solve problems on the spot, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
That not only helps with customer relations, it helps the employee feel like they are actually resolving issues, which results in employee retention and positive moral overall.
What if a nurse wasn't able to perform CPR immediately because it was the doctor's job to make the executive decision? The patient would die. That is the same type of urgency our front line people are facing on a daily basis and we need to give them the power to "save" the customer.
Do you want competitive edge selling to the federal government? Create bench strength in your front line team members and include your problem solving concepts when you sell your products and services. A strong problem solving team with constant training will be your most outstanding asset. Remember, our goal is not to be just "good," we need to be "outstanding."
A federal employee's worst nightmare is risk. Develop a strong customer service team and tell everyone about it. Share case studies of real customer resolutions and instruct your potential customer how you can resolve any potential "bugs" in the system. With this excellent reputation of resolving issues quickly, you will unseat the incumbent.
Now I bet you're wondering which airline diffused my baggage situation so quickly. It was Southwest Airlines and now this potentially angry customer has become an advocate and literally an advertiser because I've told this story to you.
I began to panic because I only had one day at home to do my laundry and hit the road again Sunday morning. I had no time to worry about my baggage.
I walked over to the service desk, which had three airline employees. You could tell by their faces that they get a tongue lashing on a regular basis and they prepared for my opening line. "My bag is not here."
We walked through the exercise of describing the bag from a series of photos and I began to fill out some paperwork when one of the employees walked in with my bag.
My luggage looked like it had caught fire or something exploded from the inside of it. I gasped and asked, "What happened?"
She said, "It fell off the conveyor belt, got wedged underneath and I found it being demolished by the conveyor belt. The burns are from the belt." I could see my new suit, burned and hanging out of the five inch hole it made.
I took a breath and asked, "Now what?" She left and returned with a brand new bag, which looked exactly like mine. She instructed me to unpack my bag and repack my belongings into the new bag. She asked me to separate my damaged items.
My damaged inventory was one skirt from one suit, pants from another suit and a bottle of vitamins. I wrote down my losses on a claim check while I shook my head, "I just bought these clothes. This is very upsetting, but I'm thankful it wasn't worse."
Being about 12 midnight on a Friday night, I expected the customer service person to give me a claim check and either ask me to send in a letter or an email; or call a 1-800 number to make a claim.
That's not what happened. She looked at the items I claimed, looked at my estimated value on the items and hand wrote a check in the whole amount.
In five minutes, the entire situation was resolved and my anger was completely gone.
I learned a valuable lesson from this experience.
As Sales Managers and Owners, we need to empower our front line customer service representatives, project managers, and help desk technicians to resolve issues immediately.
By doing so, we are letting go of our "management" control which comes with a little risk for our company, but we're also giving them the power to solve problems on the spot, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
That not only helps with customer relations, it helps the employee feel like they are actually resolving issues, which results in employee retention and positive moral overall.
What if a nurse wasn't able to perform CPR immediately because it was the doctor's job to make the executive decision? The patient would die. That is the same type of urgency our front line people are facing on a daily basis and we need to give them the power to "save" the customer.
Do you want competitive edge selling to the federal government? Create bench strength in your front line team members and include your problem solving concepts when you sell your products and services. A strong problem solving team with constant training will be your most outstanding asset. Remember, our goal is not to be just "good," we need to be "outstanding."
A federal employee's worst nightmare is risk. Develop a strong customer service team and tell everyone about it. Share case studies of real customer resolutions and instruct your potential customer how you can resolve any potential "bugs" in the system. With this excellent reputation of resolving issues quickly, you will unseat the incumbent.
Now I bet you're wondering which airline diffused my baggage situation so quickly. It was Southwest Airlines and now this potentially angry customer has become an advocate and literally an advertiser because I've told this story to you.
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