[CRM] US customer service is world-class

WASHINGTON: Travelling through the United States is a lesson in customer service second to none. Everything is super-fantastic, super neat and works! (Well, except for their planes which never depart on time, but they are super-apologetic about it!)

Okay, so I was mostly in mid-west America (Hicksville to jaded New Yorkers apparently and where rudeness is a tourist attraction all by itself), but my experience on this, my first trip to North America was of utter warmth, politeness, friendliness and superb customer service. (Some of my friends and family aren’t as nice!)

And I had plenty of time to observe this in action after being stranded at Washington’s Dulles Airport for almost 16 hours in transit on top of an 18-hour flight from South Africa after flights were cancelled due to a storm system. (There was a friendly little hurricane off one of the coasts apparently screwing up the weather… How else do you refer to a hurricane called ‘Dolly’? Ferocious? Doesn’t really work!)

I was practically finished after that ordeal and may have been tempted to go a bit postal if I were in South Africa after almost 36 hours with barely any sleep and a shower, but I was stunned into resigned acceptance by the extreme helpfulness of airport customer service and perfect strangers. I found myself apologising for bothering them to try find out which gate I was supposed to be on standby at. And I’m sure it wasn’t just my ‘super-cute accent’ which defined me as a foreigner in potential need, as I observed this fairly jovial acceptance of crisis as I traversed three states and was delayed with every flight at every airport. I just got the next one, or we sat on the runaway for a few hours listening to the air hostesses’ stories or other passengers’ jokes.

Rather than becoming an ordeal, I was able to chalk the experience up to exactly that: experience. I still got to my conference and still managed to make most of my meetings – and tell everyone, genuinely, that I had a fantastic time.

The last time a single flight was cancelled at Durban airport recently, passengers broke a plate glass window and the riot police were called!

This is, of course, a generalization; it was just my personal experience on one trip, but I did not have one bad customer service experience. It’s a bit surreal, actually, I started to feel as if I was on a 1950’s movie set, ala Pleasantville, after a while, and started to get a bit homesick for some good old road rage or a lunatic minibus driver in the sedate Cleveland traffic or a disinterested Kansas City shop assistant.

What we know as familiar is comforting! But it got me thinking about 2010 and how much work we have to do to provide visitors with a great experience. It really does start with as little as a smile and a friendly greeting, as the people you meet in the most ordinary situations… at the airport, customs, the taxi driver, security guards, police, hotel staff, parking attendants, airline staff, shop assistants, etc, are actually our frontline tourism ambassadors.

I have had a wonderful and very positive experience in the States on this business trip – not just from my hosts at the conference I attended and presented at, the B2B media conglomerate I spoke to or the industry association headquarters I visited. The experience that stood out for me, that is my takeout from this trip, is the absolute superior customer service experience I received from ordinary Americans just doing their jobs or passing me by in an airport terminus.

Can we do the same for our visitors, especially for 2010?