Use Little Things to Make Your Customers Comfortable
SouthWest Airlines - funny little guys.
I’m not much of a flyer (twice in my life). One of them was a couple of weeks ago. I flew SouthWest to Florida.
A few odd things (as I thought at the beginning) happened. First the three flight attendants seemed as if they were on vacation (doing their job, but really having a good time and entertaining the customers). “Well, they must be a weird team.” Then, once we landed in Ft. Lauderdale, one of them started singing and threatened us that he would stop only if we applaud. Everyone started laughing and clapping their hands like crazy.
A pretty nice and interesting three hour flight. Although, due to reasons out of the airline’s control, we were delayed about two hours, almost everyone seemed quite relaxed and in a good mood when getting off the plane.
When time arrived to get back home, due to some weather advisories in effect in Chicago, I decided to call SouthWest to make sure my flight is not delayed. As this is a very busy airline, it took me about 15 minutes of waiting before being able to talk to anyone. But, guess what, it was anything but boring. You know how in such situations almost all businesses talk to you about their latest services and prices and so on in an extremely boring way. Not these guys. They did such a good job at alternating information, jokes and trivia that I almost felt sorry when I finally got to talk to a customer service representative. I was having such a good time. 
Here’s a short example (it’s not word by word, but approximately): “We appologize for making you wait such a long time. Please relax. To do so breath deeply. And just so you know, most people breath through a different nastro every 3 to 4 hours”
Needless to say I talked to friends about such experiences. And you can bet that the combination of low price and imrpovised customer entertainment will make me (and probably some of those I told about it) keep them in mind for future flying needs.
Such examples are something we should all follow. Using little things to make our customers feel comfortable and (in some cases) reduce their frustrations can help spread the word about our business (of any kind) and make them come back.
As you saw, it doesn’t take much (because in many cases it’s little things that make people feel good). Just use your imagination and don’t be affraid to break out of conventional business behaviour.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Coincidentally, I also flew Southwest to Florida a couple of weeks ago. I love flying Southwest. They are the first airline that comes to mind whenever I have to fly somewhere in ConUS. Wait until you fly them to the west coast. I flew Southwest to California last year. I had to transfer in Vegas. The flight attendants had us all playing games. We even took up collection and had a lottery so that some lucky winner would have some gambling money in Vegas. Some guy won 90 bucks. It was a lot of fun. There website is nice too. I used it to book my flight to Florida. You can even print out your boarding pass. It’s nice to know that there are companies out there that focus on pleasing the customer.
jose