Nathania Johnson

Think your company is too boring for online video? Think again…

Today, Mark Goren of Transmission Marketing blogged about Spirit Airlines’ poor customer relations incidents. The CEO of Spirit apparently wrote an internal email about a customer service situation that eventually made its way to some bloggers…

“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”

The CEO acted on impulse, but the only reason that ended up being a bad thing was because his impulses are based on flawed character. Life is full of impulsive, improvised moments. Our character must be in tact if we are going to make spontaneous choices.

So, let’s imagine if the opposite had happened.

What if, instead of having poor customer relations, Spirit had awesome customer relations. If, for example, when Alex Rudloff was informed that his flight was canceled, the Spirit employee stayed on the phone with him to schedule a new flight, give him a refund, or provide him with a voucher - that would have been far preferable to him waiting for hours on the phone, internet and in person only to be told he couldn’t have a voucher and had to reschedule his flight on Spirit to arrive much later than he wanted (no partner airlines).

Most people’s impulse reaction to good customer relations would be to tell others about it. If things had gone differently, you might see blogging posts that encouraged people to fly Spirit because it’s such a great experience. Impulse informs impulse. Ask yourself who’s impulse you’re being influenced by - and whose impulse are you influencing.

There’s a song on the latest Lifehouse CD called “Easier to Be.” I love it because it’s a very romantic song about how the guy feels like his love makes it easier to be himself. I think of my husband every time I listen to it.

So let’s look at business. How easy do we make it easy to be our customers? A core improv principle is supporting your scene partner. In business, our customers are one of our many scene partners. When we make strong choices and advance the scene (instead of stall to see what we can get out of a situation for ourselves), then we are taking care of our customers.

When we help people to feel comfortable in their own skin, we empower them. And when they associate that positive feeling with us, then we increase the likelihood of their loyalty.

No one really wants to be part of a company that’s all business. Don’t we love to hear about companies that treat their employees like rock stars? Don’t we love to do business or purchase products that treat us like rock stars?

Then that’s what inspires us to take what’s been given and dish it right back out! It’s not just about building business, it’s about tapping who we want to be a human beings. Go make it happen!