Creating WOW! Part 2

Hertz, Boston Logan Airport

This is a major shout-out to my new best friend, Brian, and his team at the Hertz (http://www.hertz.com) facility at Boston Logan Airport. I’ve been a pretty loyal Hertz customer for most of the last 20 years. Friends and colleagues often question the sanity of paying extra for Hertz car rentals versus many of their competitors. Here’s why…

…My family and I were traveling in the Boston and Southern New Hampshire area for part of our spring break trip. On the plane after dropping off the car, Heather discovered that she had left her glasses in a storage tray in the car we had been driving. And, we discovered that we had also left behind a hat and a pair of mittens in the same storage tray. I’ve been renting cars for over 20 years. In that time, I’d never left anything of substance behind, but always assumed that if I left it in a car that would be the last time I ever saw the article.

We called Hertz as soon as we got off the plane to see if the items had been found. The representative searched for us, but couldn’t find them. However, it was late on a Sunday night so he suggested that we call back the next morning and talk to “Brian” who handles lost and found among other responsibilities.

Monday morning I called Brian and left a message. Figuring this experience would be like most others with major corporations, I didn’t expect to hear back from him for a few days, if at all. Our first surprise then came when Brian called back within about 10 minutes. The good news was that he had already found the glasses and the mittens. The bad news was that the hat was missing. We were elated to know that the glasses had been found. Then came surprise number 2 – Brian asked if we knew that one of us was also missing a Palm Tungsten T5 PDA. The shock to us was that we didn’t even yet know that the PDA was missing. We had him check a couple entries to verify that the PDA belonged to me. Then, came surprise number 3 – Brian said he could ship the items back to us immediately if we could give him a shipping company account number. I was out of my office so I told him that either I could call him back with the number or he could pull it out of the contact file on the Palm handheld. (Sure, I thought. Who is going to want to do that?) Within seconds Brian pulled up the number, confirmed that it was the right one and said that everything would be shipped for delivery the next day. Sure enough, it all showed up Tuesday afternoon.

Epilogue to the story (Surprise #4): About a week later, the hat that apparently had not been found showed up unannounced in a separate package in the mail. Brian and his team stayed on the hunt long enough to find it.

We, of course, were delighted on many levels. Brian and his team saved us hundreds of dollars and countless amounts of hassle by finding the glasses, the Palm and the other items. His courtesy, energy and enthusiasm on our behalf far exceeded what we expect and get from most service people these days. And, his initiative in finding the items in the first place, making getting them back to us by finding the shipping company account number and staying on the project until all the items were returned was truly astounding.

In all, Brian’s effort added up to a phenomenal WOW! experience that earned our loyalty to Hertz for at least the next 20 years!

Questions to consider: How many “Brian-type” employees work in your organization? What are they doing to create WOW! experiences for your customers? Where does your organization fall short? To what extent do people have the latitude to WOW! the customers? To what extent do they believe it’s their responsibility to do so? What’s the value of a long-term, loyal customer to your organization? What are you doing to ensure you create more of those type customers?