"Please know that it’s never our intention to inconvenience our best customers."
I wonder if customer service reps have been reading too many Dilbert comic strips. Scott Adams couldn’t have come up with a better line. This was part of an email that a friend of mine received from an airline, after her luggage had been lost.
This is not the first time she’s been inconvenienced. She travels monthly to South Carolina from Denver for her work as a consultant. Her luggage has been left behind so many times at the DC hub that she was beginning to wonder if the airline gods had it out for her.
My friend is also quite witty. She added this clarifier: "Oh, good. I was beginning to think it really was me. As in the infamous breakup line, "It’s not you. It’s me." " Darn. I was getting used to calling her the Queen of Lost Luggage.
So here’s a fun exercise. Complete this sentence 10 times, as fast as you can: It’s never my intention to…..
So here goes:
- It’s never my intention to hurt my dear husband’s feelings.
- It’s never my intention to hurt my sweet sons’ feelings.
- It’s never my intention to have a dirty car with loose granola in the backseat and pebble and leaves on the car mats and windows that have grime from a full winter of driving.
- It’s never my intention to go back on my word and not write for thirty minutes each day when I told my coach I would do that.
- It’s never my intention to be late each morning in taking my kids to school.
You get the idea. What I’m struck by is the power of intention (to lift a phrase from Wayne Dyer). If it’s not my intention to do these awful things, am I really intending to do the opposite–to listen carefully to my family and what they need, to keep a clean car, to keep my word, to be on time? Ouch. I’ve caught myself. (For all you writers out there, don’t you just hate that?)
And as for the airline that my friend is still frequenting (so much so that the crew knows her by name…), what have you intended for your best customers in terms of a great customer experience?