May I Have a Blanket?
Posted by Liz Strauss · 2 Comments
On the way to a meeting last week, I was on an airplane. An attendant was walking down the aisle slowly. I asked politely if he might find me a blanket when he got a moment. Without a word, he reversed direction, went to an overhead compartment, and retrieved a blanket. The attendant handed me the blanket and continued on.
Beyond the initial acknowledgement of my first word, the attendant did not make eye contact with me again. Nor did he say a word. I realized that as he walked away.
I wasn’t a person to him. I was a request for action, a task to be fulfilled, a routine job duty. I had no humanity.
I would guess that he has no idea that he treats people in that fashion. I would guess that many customers don’t notice.
I would also guess many customers would notice if he treated them as the only important person on the plane. They’d probably even tell other potential customers about the experience.
If they were bloggers, they’d blog about it. Instead, I’m blogging about what he didn’t do.
Liz Strauss
Customer Service is something all businesses need these days. Unfortunately, it starts from the top.
“Treat your employees like your customers.”
If the higher ups don’t treat their people like PEOPLE, the personnel are likely to do the same to the customers.
taorist,
You’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. A company’s culture is set by the personality of the individual at the top of the organization. If that person is one of humanity and abundance, the culture will reflect that, if not the result will be what the person is in the other ways.
I learned the hard way that people have a way of letting you know when you don’t treat them as people.
It happens in schools too. Principals treat teachers like students rather than like adults.
Somehow the closer we get to each other, the less we seem to value each other’s presence. Our “trust” that the near ones will put up with us grows, when it should be our gratitude that they do it.