Acronym

I guess this is almost a day 4 story but I didn't know where to put it so I am putting it here. It is also sort of tangential since I want to tell a great marketing story that happened to me on my plane ride home.

I flew Southwest airlines out of BWI because it was direct and did the same in reverse. I am not a huge fan of Southwest all the time because planes are crowded, I don't like the way they used to cattle herd you, I didn't get a movie or in arm rest music station or anything, etc, etc. That said about 4.5 hours into the 5 hour flight the flight attendant gets on the microphone and gives the name of someone he wants to ring their attendant call back. Well you hear the ding that we all know and a minute or two passes so no one thinks anything of it. You hear the guy get on the microphone again and he proceeds to tell everyone he has something special to announce. He tells everyone to look toward around the 6th row to where the call button is lit up because they have a first time flier there. He proceeded to announce the name of a 6 year old girl over the microphone and then give her a packet of stuff and a certificate that said she was a Southwest airlines first time flyer. Seeing as I had just been at the Annual Meeting the first thing I thought of was "wow, talk about forming a strong bond a relationship with a potential lifelong customer at a young age." I was impressed!

@Scott: That is a great way to make an impression on a first-time flyer. Glad you posted about it.

@Lisa: Thanks for the link love and for pointing us to these posts. I applaud Rick Johnston who takes us to task for blowing legal risks out of proportion, especially when you compare legal risks with the risk of doing nothing.

Scott: What a great story! I was feeling particularly herd-like at the airport yesterday morning, so I'm glad to hear a good story like that one ...

Lindy: Anytime! I'm glad that folks seem to like the roundup posts connecting to other bloggers' Annual Meeting stories ... I personally enjoy doing them, since there's so much going on at Annual I know I can't make it to many things I'd like to see. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way!

On the flipside of Scott's story, I experienced what I consider to be a HUGE airline customer service gaff on my way home, and it came from everyone's favorite new up-and-comer Virgin America (gasp!).

I was flying home from SD to Dulles, VA, and had a connection in SFO. There were about 6 or 7 others making the same trip, same itinerary. The flight out of SD was delayed and so we all missed our connecting flight in SFO. Since there were only two flights a day from SFO-Dulles, it meant we'd have to wait there for the red eye.. some 10-12 hours later. The initial flight delay out of SD was on account of cloud cover in SFO, so *technically* Virgin is able to claim innocence in the fact that these 6 poor travelers were strander for nearly a full day. Not only that, because of it being a weather related delay, they therefore did not have to do anything to make it up to us.

I've been in one or two situations like this before, nothing ever quite so bad, but honestly.. just because you don't *have* to do something for your customers does not mean that you shouldn't. If Virgin managers had taken the time to do any number of things (buy us a meal, comp an entry to the clubhouse, ANYthing), it would have done a lot to make up for the mistake that their passengers know they couldn't really avoid, and possibly have solidified them as long-standing customers for years to come. But instead they refused to do anything because they were not strictly at fault, and while I can't say for sure that I would never fly with them again, I can say that anything that had ever done to set themselves above the rest has now been erased. And for what? How much would it really have cost them to make some sort of compensatory offer to a mere 6 people?

I think this type of customer service issue happens across the board in so many places. I also think that if any of the managers who were there in the airports with us were given any sort of authority to make the choice on their own, they would have gladly been more generous and done something for us - because they all understood and saw how much of a difficulty it put on us.

There's a whole chapter in Tim (I think it's Ferris'?) book, "4-hour work week" about giving your employees more authority to handle money. He suggests giving employees a set amount to handle customer service issues (say, $250) on their own as they deem fit. This not only increases customer satisfaction but it decreases issues that are escalated to senior management. They don't have to be bothered by things they don't want to deal with in the first place. I can't agree more with his suggestion here. If more companies (and I can name quite a few - Comcast, Verizon, Virgin all spring to mind) would allow their employees a little more trust and endow them with a bit more authority, I think the whole world could be a much less angry place.