We overheard a couple of business travelers behind us, obviously growing more miffed by the minute.  One of them commented that there should be a special line for "people who don't get it!"  The other said, "Everybody knows you're supposed to take off your shoes.  Jeez!"  (For those of you not familiar with the Midwest, "Jeez" is a common form of exasperation; similar to "Tarnation" in the south.)  When we finally completed the scan, pat-down, and cavity search, my wife and I started talking about the situation while we waited for our plane to be late.

"Isn't it funny," my wife said "that people expect everyone to be familiar with the same things?"  We have both travelled a bit, and found that the best thing a person can do to keep the ego in check is go to a place where the customs are unfamiliar to you; a place where you have to rely on the patience of others to whom you are being a pain.  It always seems to come down to one person being ultimately familiar with a process while another is experiencing it for the first time.  Quite likely, the woman in the security line rarely travelled and this was her first experience with the new scanning regulations.  Perhaps if the business travelers who were complaining about her had been in situations where they made other people say "Jeez!" they would have been more patient.  This got me thinking about how good customer service requires the same quality, the ability to see every situation through the eyes of the customer; more to the point, seeing the situation through the eyes of someone who may never have experienced it before.  This is difficult for employees who deal with situations in their industry so often it seems commonplace.  It is easy to expect-like the business travelers expected of the woman in the security line-everyone to have the same bank of knowledge.  This expectation is common, but certainly not reasonable.  Employees can become so accustomed to the inevitable crisis of their profession that they forget that this might be the first time the customer has ever faced such as issue.

For example, some time ago I arrived at a hotel in Nashville very late at night.  This is one of those mega-hotel complexes, so after checking in I still had to walk 8.7 miles to find my room.  The maze of hallways and corridors would have impressed any research psychologist, only I didn't get cheese at the end of the test, I got a different reward.  My key didn't work.  This problem is not entirely uncommon, electronic key cards can't be  expected to be 100% reliable (nothing with the word "electronic" can be expected to be 100% reliable) but when it is 11:00 at night after a full day of travel, walking the 8.7 miles back to the front desk for another key wasn't at the top of my To-Do list.

When I arrived back at the front desk and explained my problem, the clerk smiled and said, "Oh yeah.  That sometimes happens."  She quickly scanned another key card and sent me on my way.  That sometimes happens?  No apology for making me walk the distance from New York to Nebraska?  No acknowledgement that I was inconvenienced?  Of course not.  If I were a hotel desk clerk, after I registered a new guest I would move on to my next task and not think about that guest until I saw him again.  When I did see him again I would focus on the immediate task at hand and send him on his way.  If the problem was him needing a different key I would simply scan a new key, done and done.  If the guest was irritated I would likely think to myself, "Boy!  All you need is a new key.  This happens sometimes.  Get over it!"

How would I approach the situation if I had to walk with the guest all the way to the room and back?  How would I feel if I actually had to drag the luggage along during the debacle?  Suddenly a defective key wouldn't seem like such a small problem.  What if the front desk person had to herd a family of children along a busy hallway when a family discovered they had been given the wrong room?  At another hotel I was given a key to a room that was occupied.  I discovered this because the couple in the room was "occupied" when I walked in the door.  The front desk clerk actually chuckled when I returned for a new room.  Would that clerk chuckle if she had to worry about running into that couple in the hallway or restaurant during her stay?  Or discovering they were part of the same business conference?  Sure, the situation might be commonplace for an employee of a hotel, but I can assure you this was a first for me.

I arrived at an airport a few days ago to discover that the parking ramps were being repaired; no parking was available.  The lady with the bright orange vest and flag told me I would have to go to the secondary airport a few miles away and take a tram back to the main terminal.  Like many travelers I timed my arrival at the airport so I wouldn't be sitting at the gate for two hours before boarding.  This "small problem" was not small to me.  When I moaned that I might miss my flight, I could tell she had heard the same complaint from dozens of travelers that day because she didn't hesitate for a second.  She smiled and said, "You'll be fine.  Just zip over to the other airport and you'll be back here in a jiff."  Sure, she was trying to remain upbeat and positive so I wouldn't stress out, but adding fifteen minutes to the process can mean making a flight for an important business function, or not making it to Chicago and having a lot of explaining to do.  "You'll be fine" can seem a rather presumptuous claim when you're not the one trying to keep to a deadline.

What if the clerk in a retail store had to put coats, hats, and mittens on a family of kids, strap them into car seats, and drive back to a store to replace an item that should have worked the first time?  What if the company that sold the defective part had to pay for the gas it took for the customer to drive back to the store to replace it?  What if the company that didn't deliver on time had to explain the mistake to all the customers down the chain instead of just the one picking up the order?  We all lead lives that often rely on the Dominos falling just as they were lined up.  One missing piece, broken part, wrong order, incorrect direction, or late arrival and the Butterfly Effect can send a day careening off course.

Thinking about "little problems" in terms of the real cost to the customer-lost time, interrupting other plans, tight schedules, other obligations to work and family-and suddenly the fix that seems quick on your end isn't so quick.  In fact, the reason any employee has difficulty being a problem solver is because he or she suffers from tunnel vision.  They can't see the issue from someone else's point of view and consider all the ramifications of what appears to be a small glitch.  Of course, if the only task at hand is replacing a broken part, or re-booking a flight, or tightening a bolt, the problem will seem trivial.  However, what if this is the customer's only day off and they didn't want to spend it driving back to the store for a screw that should have been in the parts bag?  What if the furniture they are putting together needs to be done by 6:00 because relatives are arriving?  Suddenly, "This happens all the time" sounds more insulting than reassuring.

Here is a new rule for employees, the only time they are allowed to say, "This happens all the time" is when they are assuring customers that they are not alone in what they are experiencing or unreasonable in their request.  When I am asked by a client if they can make an adjustment to my service I assure them that "This is not unusual and no problem at all."  The phrase "This happens all the time" should never be used to imply that the problem itself is a small one; because you never really know how big of a problem it might be for the customer.

Stevie Ray is a nationally recognized corporate speaker and trainer, helping companies improve communication skills, customer service, leadership, and team management.  He can be reached at www.stevierays.org or stevie@stevierays.org.

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