The mad dash to catch your plane
This has happened to me a dozen times. How about you? We rush to get the car back to the airport car rental return. Gas it up, check it in, get my luggage, shlep over to the shuttle, wait for the shuttle, get on the shuttle, wait for stragglers, stop at other terminals . . . and finally de-bus at ticketing. The whole time I’m stressing about the brutally slow wait at security and the fact that they close the doors 20 minutes before scheduled takeoff. What if the rental car company “gave a little unexpected extra” to simplify more than half of those steps?
So far it looks like Hertz is making strides towards a thoughtful purple goldfish. I’ve had two examples submitted to the project that are remark-able:
#994 in the Project submitted by Darran Miner, “A little extra. After I dropped of my Hertz rental car in Atlanta they offered to take me to the terminal in my car. I avoided the bus and it saved me about 15 minutes. He also knew the best location to drop me off – at a lower level curb side check in with no line.”
#1006 submitted by Rob Matthews, “Stan: For your collection- My colleague Anand and I were returning our car to Hertz. There was a lot of luggage in the back. Instead of taking the car back and telling us to take the shuttle Hertz drove us to our gate! Nice purple Goldfish!
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence and three times is a pattern. Has anyone else experienced this from Hertz? Would love to hear from you in the comments.
Marketing Lagniappe Takeaway – Everyone hates to wait. The trick is figuring out ways to make things more convenient for your customers? Waiting (#9) and convenience (#10) are two types of Purple Goldfish. Here are a handful of examples of each: Waiting (examples from JetBlue, Great Wolf Lodge, J.Crew, Lexus, Five Guys and Lady Gaga) and Convenience (examples from Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, amazon and TD Bank)
Today’s Lagniappe (a little something extra thrown in for good measure) – Here is a great example of making waiting more palatable. I recently was out at Legoland in Carslbad. Nothing is worse than waiting in line for 30 minutes with small children for a three minute ride. Legoland has built in lego play areas in most of its rides. A very signature purple goldfish.
Your experience is now your marketing. How do you stand out in the sea of sameness? How do you win repeat customers and influence word of mouth? Is your CX sticky? Are you Giving Little Unexpected Extras?
What’s Your GLUE? What’s Your Purple Goldfish?
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