MBA Geek

I popped out to get my lunch from Subway today and saw an amazing example of an organisation going out of their way to bend to their customer’s whim.

Here’s what happened: The girl in front of me asked for a “Veggie Patty” Sub. The person behind the counter inquired if she was vegetarian and when the girl confirmed she was, he help up his hands and asked her if should would like him to change his gloves. When she said “yes” and he proceeded to throw away the gloves he was wearing and put on a fresh pair. He also made it a point to ensure that anyone else who handled the sandwich did the same.

Now, you might argue that it wouldn’t really make much of a difference whether the same gloves were used or not. After all, it’s not really like a nut allergy, where a slight trace can have huge consequences. However, the policy Subway have implemented is more about ensuring a customer is happy with the way they are treated, than whether there really were any traces of meat on the gloves. It’s all about providing extra intangible value through optimising the customer’s experience.

The sad thing about today’s story: Even though I was impressed, the girl who got the special treatment didn’t even bother to thank the staff for the extra effort. So I thought I’d post about it and publicly thank Subway for caring about their customer. Great work guys!

What do you think is a best way to disappoint a customer? I’m sure you can come up with a big list, but right there at the top is promising something and not delivering. I arrived at the airport this morning nice and early because I knew they had free Wifi here, fired up my laptop … and no Wifi. It wasn’t all bad though, because when I tried 30 mins later the network was there, so it could well have been undergoing maintenance, but it did set me thinking all about promises and expectations. In the meantime, FlyBe announced that the earlier Gatwick flight had been delayed because of “technical issues” and that the flight to Birmingham and the flight I was on were delayed because of an “aircraft change”. Now don’t get me wrong, I do expect operational problems to creep in from time to time, but delaying three flights (out of the three on the board with that airline) is shocking!

Anyway, way to my Wifi incident. The reason I was upset was because something was promised to me (by way of a hanging advert and prior experience) and was not delivered. If there had been no prior expectation, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It’s like like Wifi is so ubiquitous that you expect to find it everywhere (yet); so spending an hour waiting in a location without Wifi wouldn’t have been a problem for me. However, the expectation that something was supposed to be there and wasn’t was a totally different ball game.

I expect some industries are also harder to deal with than others. Airlines and trains in particular have a reputation for missing their schedules, but you can imagine that with all those moving parts, problem are bound to happen. I don’t envy companies who provide satellite internet services for example, as there are physical factors that can prevent proper delivery of their services. Wifi is another matter. Everyone with a wireless router at home will know that once it’s set up and running, it can run for months without needing any attention. That’s one reason why this morning was so “interesting”.