At times customer delight comes from the least expected corners of every day experience, while an obvious choice of location for customer-oriented behaviour disappoints. This article aims to capture a similar occurrence that came to my observation while in Melbourne.
The first part of the story is around the Melbourne City Library; on my second visit to the library I approached the main counter to enquire the process to return books. A gentleman at the counter promptly attended to me and actually went out of the way, walking a good 10 metres to show me the drop box where he could simply have given directions; but this customer-friendly behaviour can be attributed to that particular individual and not necessarily the library. What that person pointed out next is the object of my current fascination – outside the library premises was a drop-box for out-of-office hour returns and that according to me is stunning.
Traditionally when we think libraries, we think antiquated buildings with grumpy silence-obsessed staffers that are on their toes to ‘fine’ you on every possible opportunity and most of us regular library members must have unintentionally defaulted returns at some point. But what I experienced here was a plethora of small yet pleasing examples of customer-oriented processes – an email reminder of approaching due dates, option to renew the books online if there were no reservations against them, the facility to return books at the time of my convenience outside office hours (my customer delight moment!), an RFID reader with real-time updates to eliminate inconsistency of delay in registering returns and also for instant DIY check-outs, and most of all it was all free!
That’s right – most of it was financed from local taxes and donations, so the customers were not even their source of income and yet considerable thought had been put into ensuring their reader’s comfort.
The second experience unfolded at the Melbourne Tullamarine Airport. The airline industry is one of the pioneers of CRM, mastering airline mile programmes, customer lounges, frequent flyer promotions et al and one would expect some of this customer-centricity to rub on to the airports too, but wasn't to be the case at Melbourne Airport. I was quite disappointed to find that the trolleys at the airport were available for a charge (not a deposit)! Now four dollars is not an exorbitant amount but the idea of charging customers for a very basic facility is certainly outrageous. One would expect international travellers to carry moderate luggage and the need for trolleys would be frequent. If retrieving the cost was unavoidable, a more logical way would be by adding it to the airport tax that is collected along with the ticket tariff, where it had a better chance of passing unnoticed.
To summarise, every tiny step implemented by companies reflects the customer-centric ethos of the organization and no points for guessing which one takes the honours in this case!
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