Service with a smile
In this episode we explore the limits of automation, and how a simple smile can make a huge difference when everything’s under stress
A hot, hot day: the temperature was probably just shy of forty degrees (a hundred, for those still using Fahrenheit). My colleague and his family are taking a young relative to her flight at Heathrow. She needs to get there on time, of course, but it’s a straightforward run that normally takes no more than a couple of hours at most, and right now they’ve plenty of time to spare. Nothing to worry about.
And then the car breaks down. On the motorway. In the middle of the road. And you’ve just discovered there’s no help coming either. Oh joy.
No time no time no time - you’ll have leave one of the others in the family to deal with that. And your relative doesn’t know how to get around in London at all: you’ll have to take her there yourself.
So now it’s an urgent chaos of buses and trains and buses and trains to get her to the airport on time:
In the midst of this kind of mess, what helps, most of all, is the people. Literally, service with a smile, as my colleague put it, in a post on the social-media site LinkedIn:
Service with a smile.
Working with Tom Graves on the Change-mapping books, one of his key areas of interest was everything working together on purpose.
I had a fourteen hour lesson of that while crossing a hot London dropping a relative off at Heathrow. While one of the parts of the enterprise, the IT, worked quite well, what really impressed me was the staff of TfL [Transport for London] and Heathrow. They went above and beyond to help us in a difficult situation. Unlike a nameless breakdown recovery service, which asked us to fill in an online form of our issue, on a main road, with no internet connection...
Talking to real live, caring person makes all the difference and helps resolve any issue of any size and complexity. Thank you TfL and Heathrow.
And yes, she did catch her flight.
On the IT, the part that “worked quite well” was the apps for things like maps and routes and timetables and so on - particularly those that worked offline, and didn’t need to be online the whole time.
But it was the call to the breakdown recovery service that turned into an instant nightmare. It used to have a real person on the line: but they’ve all been replaced by an automated non-service that assumes that the internet will always be available - which it often isn’t as soon as you’re outside of the city. The result is a promise of help that simply isn’t there, just when you need it most: Not A Good Idea…
By contrast, what made all the difference was the presence of those support-people - those in yellow jackets, like the one in the photograph above. It’s school-holidays over there right now: crowds of people with children and luggage and the rest, all in a muddle, all trying to get to the right place at the right time and not knowing how to get there.In that situation, the potential for the wrong kind of chaos is huge. But someone had understood that this would happen, had planned for that probability - hence quietly everywhere, all in the right places, all of these people in yellow jackets, each wearing a badge saying ‘How can I help?’. All of the information needed, literally in hand; a quiet, calming voice; directions, pointing the way; service with a smile.
The moral of this story, perhaps, is that if you’re providing a service upon which people will and must rely, expecting the IT to work everywhere will never be enough. There should always be a fallback to a real person whenever the IT won’t or can’t work in that context.
And yeah, the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’s ‘Don’t Panic!’ in big friendly letters is nice an’ all, but it really doesn’t help all that much - especially if you’re already in near-panic in the first place. When people are in trouble, what they need most is something that the IT can’t provide: a calm quiet voice, the clear feeling that they care, and service with a smile.
(Many thanks to concept-designer Joseph Chittenden for the photograph and the permission to use his story.)