About a year ago I encountered some significant problems while traveling with United Airlines to my Christmas destination. As reparations, they awarded me a booklet of travel vouchers, each good for a certain amount of money. Inconveniently enough, these vouchers cannot be redeemed over the Internet; the customer must phone in a reservation and then either mail in the vouchers or take them to the local airport to apply them to the price of the ticket. This past weekend I made my Thanksgiving travel plans and intended to use the vouchers. I made my reservations over the phone, and the customer service representative I spoke with told me that I would need to redeem them at my local airport within 24 hours or the reservation would expire. She informed me that the ticketing counter at my local airport would be open until 7 PM, and that the best time to be there would be after 2 PM.
The next day I showed up to the United counter at my local airport around 6:15 PM. The LCD display above the United counter said "This counter open until 7:30 PM". The counter was unstaffed when I arrived, but I waited around because I assumed that someone would notice a customer waiting and come by to help me. Eventually a uniformed United employee did arrive.
"Are you waiting for the United counter?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"The counter is closed," he said.
"I'm under the impression that that's not the case," I said, nodding towards the screen.
"Oh, that's a mistake," he said, "we close at 6 on Saturday."
"The people on the phone at United told me that you were open until 7."
"They're wrong. We're all closed down."
"You're here."
"I only came over here as a courtesy. I'm clocked out. You'll need to come back tomorrow."
"I can't," I said, "I made a reservation over the phone and I need to pay for it before midnight tonight or I'll lose it."
"I'm sorry," he said. "We're all closed down here. All the computers are off, they took the money away. I only came over here as a courtesy."
"I appreciate that," I said. "Since you're here, can you help me?"
"No," he said, "I've clocked out. You're going to need to call United on the phone and ask them to extend your reservation."
"Could you do that for me?"
"No," he said. "I've clocked out."
"I just think that they might be a little difficult," I explained. "They're not always that helpful. They might not just let me ask for an extension. Wouldn't it be better coming from you?"
"I'm sorry," he said, "I can't call them. I've clocked out."
"Can I call them and just put you on?"
"No."
"I don't understand," I said. "Are you legally prohibited from calling them after you've clocked out?"
"I'm not getting paid to work anymore," he said.
And that is the crux of the problem. Because he was no longer being paid to work, he ceased to think that he had any obligation to act as though he were working. I do understand that he never had to come over to the counter in the first place. I do understand that it was after hours for him. I do understand that dealing with United Airlines over the telephone can be frustrating and time-consuming. It pains me, though, that this man felt unable to do something if he wasn't being paid for it. (Not only did he not do anything to help me, he also did nothing about the screen that projected the wrong information. The computers may have been off, but he could at least have put a piece of paper across the screen. I pity the next customer who, misled by the same sign, waited for help at an unstaffed counter until 7:30.)
It reminded me of a time I was shopping at Wal-Mart. I purchased six of an item but the cashier charged me for seven; when I pointed out her mistake, she told me that I would have to go to the Customer Service desk to get my money back. When I arrived at the desk, one woman was being helped, and I was the next in line. I waited at least twenty minutes before someone helped me. Of course, it makes sense that sometimes we have to wait in line at stores. In this case, though, there were two Wal-Mart employees behind the Customer Service counter in addition to the one who was helping the first customer. Why, one might ask, was I forced to wait twenty minutes? The other employees were on their break, of course, so they couldn't do any work. They couldn't even lift up a phone to summon an employee who was working. (I haven't set foot in a Wal-Mart since, except to use the bathroom.)
What is the deal with this? Why do these people care so little about the impression they make on their customers that they so visibly demonstrate their indifference to their needs? Why are these people so lazy that they refuse to lift a finger if there is no monetary compensation forthcoming? Why do they take so little pride in what they do that they don't care whether they do it well or not?
Is this a question of corporate culture? Do these large, faceless organizations neglect to inculcate helpfulness in their employees because, due to the size of their market share or the nature of the services they provide, they have the consumer at their mercy no matter what they do? Is customer service not a priority to these companies?
Is this, perhaps, the influence of unions? Are the workers' unions at these companies so concerned about protecting employees from their employers' demands that they must commit to being entirely disengaged when off the clock? (As it turns out, Wal-Mart employees are not unionized.)
A couple of organizations at the opposite end of the spectrum stand out in my mind as modeling excellent customer service and as proof that things need not always be so awful. The first is Nordstrom department stores, where the employees (known as "Nordies") provide service to their customers beyond what any reasonable person would expect. Consider the following exemplars (originally described by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in Built to Last; quoted from p. 73-74 of Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath):
The Nordie who ironed a new shirt for a customer who needed it for a meeting that afternoon;
The Nordie who cheerfully gift-wrapped products a customer bought at Macy's;
The Nordie who warmed customers' cars in winter while they finished shopping;
The Nordie who made a last-minute delivery of party clothes to a frantic hostess;
And even the Nordie who refunded money for a set of tire chains -- although Nordstrom doesn't sell tire chains.
The second is the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of charter schools. KIPP teachers and administrators give their cell phone numbers to their students so that the students can call them in the evening for homework help. They stay after school during the week and come in on weekends to work with struggling students. Consider these stories from a local KIPP school:
The teacher who drove a student to school every day for months when she couldn't find a ride;
The group of teachers who drove to a student's house to intervene when he was exhibiting signs of gang affiliation;
The principal who sat with two students every night after school to ensure that they finished their homework;
The teachers who drove groups of students to visit a sick classmate in the hospital;
And the teacher who took a student shopping for new uniform clothes when his family couldn't afford them.
It is hard to imagine either a Nordie or a KIPP teacher ever saying "I can't help you because I've clocked out"; to the contrary, I don't think the latter ever actually do clock out. Why, though, are these wonderful people seen as unusual or extraordinary? Why are they the exception and not the rule? What is wrong with us as consumers that we are complacent enough to accept apathy and indifference as a substitute for genuine customer service?
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