Last week, I was flying on a Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Bangalore. This was an evening flight and they serve food (dinner) in the flight.
The service staff completed serving food to all the passengers and started to come back to collect the used plates.
Meanwhile, I tasted the food and did not particularly like the food and so had left most of the food untouched.
The staff came back, collected my un-touched food plate and went back without a word.
I think, this was a moment of truth for me as a customer. If someone from the service staff had noticed that I had not eaten anything from the food served and came back to ask me the reason or to offer something else that they had, I would have been truly surprised and happy.
This does not take any specialized training to do. This is something that any member of the service team would have done, if I were a guest at their homes.
So, why do they not care when I am guest on board an aircraft that they are serving?
It is such moments of truth when the true engagement of the employees and the organization is tested and opinions formed.
It doesn’t matter how many times the service staff announce during take off or landing about how they value our business and would like to serve us again, I know that these are only said as they are required to say them and that there is no true emotion or truth behind these statements.
How many such moments of truth does your support team encounter in a day? How do they deal with them? How do you deal with your employees who do well in these moments? How do you identify and train employees who falter in such moments so that they learn and do not repeat their mistakes? Therein lies the crux of true customer engagement and delight.
Do you agree with my thoughts? Do let me know your thoughts by commenting below or by tweeting them to me at @rmukeshgupta.
PS: An interesting video that talks about the “Moments of Truth”.
Mukesh, thanks for the blog. I believe its important to identify the moments of truth and adapt your processes to enhance the experience. In offline situations employees can be trained to identify and judge the situation and be responsive. In online situations it can be more complicated. You need context and the actual state of the individual customer to make a judgement and respond properly to the individual in real-time. We are working on this idea for 2 years now where it had its own moments of truth but its definitely feasible. For now, marketers are running away with it but I believe that customer service processes are an excellent opportunity to build and increase customer engagement.