Just One Bag of Peanuts?!

I returned recently from a trip to Atlanta to visit with some of our commercial customers and to pay my semi-annual respects to the terrific people at the Georgia Public Utility Commission. Just before I left New York I read that Delta Airlines was emerging from bankruptcy. So I was particularly interested in flying Delta. One of the customers I was having dinner with is married to a Delta flight attendant. So when I booked my flight on Delta I thought I was doing a good thing: For Delta. For my customer’s wife. And for the city of Atlanta, where Delta is based.

Bad move. Maybe it was the fact that I had taken a flight to Houston the week before on Jet Blue. It wasn’t the fact that on Jet Blue I had room to put my legs. At 5’10” I’m not particularly tall, but since tearing my Achilles tendon last year I need room to stretch my legs and work them around a bit. Jet Blue seems to have heard from its passengers and given them some more leg room. I’m also not a huge fan of watching movies on flights, so I was not particularly impressed with the video screen embedded in the Jet Blue seat ahead of me. In fact, I found the constant ads annoying. They reminded me of Bruce Springstein’s old song in the early days of cable television, “Fifty-seven Channels and Nothing On!”

No, what impressed me about Jet Blue was its generosity. Nobody served a rubber chicken or a slice of shoe leather dubbed a filet mignon. To tell the truth I don’t even miss the dinners we used to balance on that little tray table. Instead, on three occasions during the flight friendly, smiling flight attendants came down the aisle and placed directly in front of the passengers a wicker basket filled with granola bars, packages of nuts, and bags of chips. When you reached out to take one the attendant said, “Would you like another?” “Oh, don’t mind if I do,” I would say. The act was generous. The smile was sincere. The atmosphere was hospitable.

Fast forward to Delta Airlines. As I felt a thrombosis working its way up my calves, I noticed a grouchy attendant coming towards me. He looked like his car had been totaled that morning after his wife had left him. He pushed a rickety metal cart that bushwhacked the knees and elbows of passengers on the aisle.

“What would you like?” came the gruff voice.

“What do you have?” I plaintively responded, hoping my guilt ridden voice would encourage him to take pity. I had not eaten since about 5 in the morning and it was now 7 pm.

“Peanuts!” was the response.

“I’d love some,” I said. The attendant handed me a bag – or rather, held a bag in my direction which I had to reach out to retrieve. Was it my imagination? Or did he clutch it tight in his hand and did I have to pull it from his grip?

“May I have another,” I asked in my most supplicating voice.

“Only if none of the other passengers want them and if there are any left,” came the reply.

I turned around and looked toward the back of the plane. Behind me was a sea of empty seats. “OK,” I said, “Please come back if there are any left.”

Needless to say, I never saw or heard from the attendant again.

I thought about my experience on Jet Blue. I thought about the cost of that little bag of peanuts. And I thought about writing a letter to the president of Delta whose picture I had seen in the newspaper recently.

What does this all have to with energy?

Customer service is more than just reassuring weather reports from the pilots’ cabin. It’s more than banners hanging from the ceiling of the terminal with slogans about customers coming first. It’s more than self-promoting ads in the newspaper or glossy inserts in monthly bills.

Customer service is about every single person in the company treating customers fairly and honestly. I wonder if that attendant’s manager ever quoted the Customer Golden Rule that we talk about at every MXenergy meeting: “Do unto our customers what we would want done to us.” I wonder if anybody ever asked the attendant: “If you were sitting in that seat on the evening flight and had not eaten since 5 in the morning, would you want another bag of peanuts?”

Sorry to say to my friends in Atlanta: Jet Blue has it right and Delta has it wrong. A bag of peanuts and a smile are small prices to pay for customer loyalty.