Tag: recognition & appreciation

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Engagement

What’s So Funny About Employee Engagement?

Plenty, if you’re cynical about it. And such cynicism is not surprising given how many employees endure lame attempts to improve engagement. For example:

  • Providing a special lunch for employees as a token employee appreciation event.
  • Conducting periodic employee engagement or satisfaction surveys with little or no follow-up.
  • Creating an HR or cross-company employee committee to provide recommendations to improve engagement with limited authority or budget to make anything meaningful happen.

E. L. Kersten, founder of Despair, Inc. has built a successful business based on ineffective efforts to better motivate and engage employees. A sample of his anti-motivational messages from his DEMOTIVATOR® products include:

  • “Worth: Just because you’re necessary doesn’t mean you’re important.”
  • “Get to Work: You aren’t being paid to believe in the power of  your dreams.”
  • “Motivation: If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job. The kind robots will be doing soon.”
  • “Demotivation: Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people.

I admit I enjoy the humor in Kersten’s satire. I also recognize that Despair, Inc. wouldn’t be successful if it didn’t resonate with people.

Yes, it’s easy to make fun of employee engagement based on how companies approach it. It’s also a critical reminder that effective employee engagement is a serious business.

Categories
Engagement

How to Keep Your Employees Engaged During the Holidays

The last few weeks of the calendar year are stressful in the workplace as people become distracted preparing for the holidays. Employees can be overwhelmed with year-end reporting and planning deadlines just as everyone else seems to be using up the last of their vacation days. And those at work may be so into the holiday frenzy that they’ve mentally checked out.

Here are five ways managers can help employees stay on-task and engaged during the holiday season.

  • Keep employees mission-focused, customer-focused, and connected.
    Respectfully remind employees how year-end projects and planning are critical to your company’s mission and goals. Make time to recognize employees’ individual and collective efforts in taking care of customers and each other as the year winds down.
  • Acknowledge and alleviate seasonal stresses.
    Consider what you can do ahead of time to minimize year-end pressures such as starting your business planning cycle earlier (if feasible) to avoid a planning crunch when fewer people are at work. Or schedule the employee holiday lunch or dinner party in January when there are fewer social activities; this also gives employees something to look forward to after the holidays.
  • Ask employees to share their ideas.
    Go to the source and solicit suggestions from your employees as to what might be done to improve productivity during this time of year — whether in a special discussion at staff meetings or as a project for a designated employee task force.
  • Inspire and de-stress.
    • Invite employees to share with each other how they cope with seasonal work stress … the funniest holiday situation they’ve encountered at work … how they successfully defused a difficult situation with a customer, etc.
    • Give-back to the community by volunteering time as a group to work in a food bank or collect gifts for needy families. To keep such an activity from creating more stress, however, employee involvement must be voluntary with no management or peer pressure regarding time and financial contributions.
    • While bringing holiday sweets to the office is welcome by many, also consider healthy ways to reduce stress. For example, a licensed massage therapist can be hired on-site to provide 10-15 minute back massages for employees or a yoga instructor can lead mini-meditation sessions.
  • Patience, patience, patience.
    Keep in mind the end of the year can be a challenging time for everyone: you, your customers, employees, colleagues, and business partners.

Try one or more of these ideas to help get through the season. When you find what works, you can apply it next year when you go through this all over again. Happy Holidays!

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

Best Lessons from Bad Bosses-Part 2

We all love great bosses and hate the bad ones. The only upside to a bad boss is what we learn from our experience working with that person: primarily what not to do and, occasionally, what to do.

Following up my previous post on lessons learned from bad bosses, here is more great advice shared by colleagues.

Understand Who’s Important

The best lesson I learned from a bad boss is — to kiss your subordinates’ butts. Put another way, be of service and work for YOUR TEAM instead of the other way around. You need your team to get things done. If you are there for them when they need you, they will be there for YOU. So, for example, if one of your team members needs an extra day off or a little resource boost on a project and you deliver, they are far more likely to help you when you need to pull together a presentation for YOUR boss.

A lot of bad bosses get it reversed. They are busy ingratiating themselves to THEIR boss and treating their staff like dirt. My favorite and best boss taught me this lesson in a big way. In some ways it felt like he worked for me. Whenever I needed resources or him to push something through the system, he was there. This was a huge help in my being successful. This also meant that when he came to my office on a Friday at 4:30 p.m. begging for help on his board presentation — you KNOW I was there, and happy to do it. — Ivana S. Taylor, Small Business Influencer, DIYMarketers.com
A Bad Boss Can Do Something Right

I learned that sometimes the rules need to be broken when something important needs to be done. Not unethically, but when a rule designed to solve one problem, creates a barrier to success, it can be the right decision to do the wrong thing.

We had a process whereby a certain form needed to be filled out. It was a form designed and created 40 year earlier by the founder when there was maybe 100 employees. We had over 2,000 at the time and the form was no longer needed. But no one wanted to stop using it because they feared the repurcussions. My bad boss simply stopped using the form. Two years later someone asked about the forms and he played stupid. We never had to do the form again. Nothing fell apart. Nothing stopped working. The world went on without it.

Lesson: The requirements of the past can stop you from creating a future. — Paul Hebert, consultant/speaker/writer for engagement, incentives and rewards

Don’t Ignore the Value of Engaged Employees

  1. Recognize the fundamental economics of having engaged employees, customers, channel partners, and communities, which is that: companies with highly engaged audiences relationships do better financially than the average company; relationships with customers and talent are a company’s biggest financial and brand equity asset; and disengagement has hard costs in terms of turnover, lower productivity, poor service, more accidents, less healthy people, and legal suits that can have a significant effect on the bottom line and brand equity.

  2. Empower and value people, rather than control them and treat them like statistics: people who feel empowered, act like owners and watch your back — people who feel controlled, act like slaves.

  3. Do as Tom Peters said:  “Manage by walking around.”  — Bruce Bolger, Managing Director, Enterprise Engagement Alliance

You Can’t Fake It + Other Important Lessons

  • Playing politics never pays — It’s shallow, transparent and short-sighted.  It may help you win the day, but it will lose you a ton of respect long-term with peers, superiors and subordinates.

  • Communicate clearly (not in code) — There’s no excuse for allowing ambiguity to cloud judgment, direction or execution. If your style of management is to expect your team to predict or guess what you mean and want, that’s terrible leadership. Not all news is good news, but people want clarity, not innuendos.

  • Invest time with your team — Absentee management never works. You can’t hide behind emails. And it’s never a good idea to look annoyed when one of your team members wants to see you or ask you a question. Successful management requires time, it requires an investment in spending time with your team to make them better, allow them to become more autonomous and productive. That just takes time, but it creates results, loyalty and longevity (for you and for them).

  • Superficial optics will backfire — This particular boss told us she wanted us to be at our desks as much as possible, so that people walking by would see how hard we are working. She literally said that to us. You can imagine what that did to her credibility.  — Matt Heinz, president, Heinz Marketing, Inc.

Special thanks to Ivana Taylor, Paul Hebert, Bruce Bolger, and Matt Heinz for sharing their lessons learned from bad bosses.

You’re invited to share
What lessons did you learn from your experience with a bad boss?

 

Categories
Engagement Training & Development

Best Lessons from Bad Bosses-Part 1

This post is inspired by Boss’s Day. I hope you’re fortunate to work with a really good boss. If not, take heart – there are valuable lessons you can learn from your experience.

I asked several colleagues to share their best lessons from bad bosses. Here are their horror stories and lessons learned.

It’s Just as Easy to Demoralize a Team as It is to Build Them Up

I had a boss who decided to change his Windows start-up theme to be Full Metal Jacket. On startup and shutdown, his computer would remind us that we were all equally worthless. After he quit, employees from around the company remarked how happy they were he was gone. The new manager removed all themes from his machine, and found more positive themes for his team to use on their computers. He also made a point of managing by walking around, and thanked his employees often for the effort they put in to make customers happy.

Both took the same amount of time and effort. One built the team up and found them recognized for customer service every year for the next 10 years. One tore the team down and made the rest of the department look down on the team, as if the manager thought they were useless, they knew they could treat them badly too.  — Phil Gerbyshak, Social Selling Training and Social Media Strategist
Blind Siding an Employee Doesn’t Help
One particularly bad boss I once had many years ago suddenly turned on me. It came “out of the blue.” I had been a “star” one moment, and the next I could do nothing right in her eyes. It did not end well for me. Here are a few of the lessons I learned:
  • Stay alert to the proverbial “handwriting on the wall.” There may have been signals I was missing. Like a drop off in communication from the boss.
  • Keep your boss in the loop at all times on everything you are doing. Run the risk of over-communicating, especially if you suspect something is “up.”
  • Determine what your boss’ priorities are and get into alignment with them. Do whatever you can to support your boss. And make her “look good.”
  • Be professional, personable, and positive at all times. Be accountable. Deliver with excellence to your clients. That way, if the tables turn on you, you can walk out the door with your head held high, knowing that “it was not about you.”
  • Sometimes the power plays that happen in a corporate environment result in some folks winning, and other folks coming out with the short end of the stick.  — Terrence Seamon, author of “To Your Success!” guide for transitioners; “Lead the Way” leader’s guide to engagement; and “Change for the Better” change agent’s guide to improvement.

How NOT to Treat an Employee

I think my lesson is (was) that the fastest way to kill enthusiasm and commitment in young talent (or even older talent for that matter) is for the boss to publicly humiliate someone in front of others, when the someone had only good intent and was trying to do their job. We all have to learn, we all make mistakes, we all need coaching and guidance. But there is a right way to handle ‘teaching moments’ and a wrong way.

When I was a young, aspiring channel marketing manager at a small software company, I worked for a Sales and Marketing VP who was promoted too fast and not mature enough for his role. He had no patience or interest in the details of actually making a business run. When on several occasions I asked questions in group sales meetings that he thought were stupid, uninformed or otherwise too tedious, he delivered stinging, humiliating responses to me – a young female – in front of a room full of mostly men sales reps. I grew to hate him, and the bitterness and resentment I felt is still called up writing this, almost 20 years after the fact. The channels business for that company also failed, because the leader in charge of it would not do what it would take to make it a success, and my own sense of urgency about taking care of channel partners certainly took a hit after my experiences with this guy. It took a long time to overcome that feeling and fear of opening my mouth in meetings. — Owner of a Strategic Communications Consulting business

Special thanks to Phil Gerbyshak, Terry Seamon, and a colleague (who’s still so traumatized by her bad boss experience that she wished to remain anonymous) for contributing to this post.

I’ll have more great lessons to share in my next post, so stay tuned …

 

 

Categories
Engagement

What Matters in Recognition and Employee Engagement: Interview with Zane Safrit

I met Zane Safrit by phone several years ago when he interviewed me on his radio show, and we’ve stayed in touch to share our work in employee engagement and organizational leadership. Our most recent conversation centered on employee happiness as a factor in employee engagement.

Zane has held numerous positions ranging from customer service rep to CEO over the course of his impressive career where he applied employee recognition and engagement for positive results. He’s now a successful business consultant helping companies do the same. He’s also the author of Recognize THEM!: 52 Ways to Recognize Your Employees In Ways They Value and The Engaged Hiring Process: A Simple Plan to Help You Hire the Best. Zane’s latest book, First, Engage Yourself, shares do-able steps that managers can use to create a culture of engagement. I’m honored to feature him on my blog.

QSM: Zane, let’s start with the of importance of recognizing employees. What matters in recognition that we’re not doing?

Zane: The “What” matters less in employee recognition than the “Who.” The employee in employee recognition matters most.

  • How do they like being recognized? A personal note, a conversation – informal or formal, a gift, a plaque.
  • When do they like being recognized? Are they a morning person or an afternoon person? That depends on their work demands and those who deserve recognition are very committed to their work – their team, their customers, their integrity. Choose the time when it interferes the least.
  • Where, in private or in a meeting, standing in front of the group or with the group?

Use their name, articulate what’s being recognized and why, communicate why and how it matters to you and those around you. Then find the right venue to share that recognition. The right venue is the one that matters most to the person being recognized.

Otherwise, they will have difficulties digesting this just dessert, and the recognition loses its impact at best and is counter-productive at worst. Like a politician popping up at an event for which they deserve no credit, you’ll give a speech, blah blah, leaving the recipient feeling awkward. You’ll have missed a great opportunity to honor that person and build a relationship with trust and engagement.

QSM: If employee recognition is so basic, why is it so difficult to apply/practice?

Zane: Employee recognition is built on the virtues of compassion and empathy. They’re innate, we’re born with them. Like seeds, they only need a chance to set roots in our behaviors and perceptions. After that we’ll find the means to nurture them or not.

Too much of our culture fails to nurture those qualities. That’s being generous to say it like that. Too much of our culture degrades, denigrates, demoralizes those who show empathy and compassion, patience, forgiveness.

In too many corporate cultures, careers are built and rewarded on the basis of denying compassion and empathy. The hard-charging, tough-minded, gets-things-done-no-matter-what manager is rewarded with perks and privileges and moves up the career ladder. Employees watch, learn and change. They change their behavior and attitudes to better emulate those they see moving ahead.

Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, wrote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

So, as long as the rewards are weighted towards disengaging behaviors many people will change to deny their natural tendencies or they’ll favor the development of other, less healthy tendencies of narcissism, arrogance, betrayal. That will keep it difficult to engage in healthy, sustaining ways with each other.

We have the choice. We can create our own conversations which lead to cultures. It’s always a choice. And it’s understandable which choices are taken.

QSM: Do you think employee engagement is still relevant? Where do you see engagement 5-10 years from now?

Zane: I have a love/hate relationship with the term “employee engagement.”

I love it for serving as an umbrella under which we can gather to discuss, debate, create and clarify the many activities, issues and factors related to creating a place to work where we’re proud, happy and productive.

I hate it for its sterile academic tone and because it’s being co-opted by too many experts who’d rather you engage with them than with each other: your peers and colleagues and direct reports.

What happens 5-10 years from now? We’ll always have engagement and the best organizations – the ones with the highest purpose that are most sustaining and most profitable – will have the highest engagement. That being said, expectations of and definitions of best will change. We’ll see significant changes to institutions, social norms, organizational climate, the economy, politics. Those will change the expectations around what’s considered engaged, what’s our highest hopes for an engaged workplace or community and what we need to survive.

QSM: As a business professional, what do you think should be taught in schools (K-12 and college) to prepare students to be engaged, productive members of the workplace?

Zane: I love this question! It ties in with the question about if it’s so basic, why’s it so difficult to practice.

I think these negative reinforcements, rewards for the wrong behavior start as children enter school. No, this isn’t a diatribe about teachers or even common core and standardized tests. No, this started when John Dewey began lining kids up in rows of desks to sit silent and only raise a hand when called on and to work diligently, by themselves, to memorize only what’s presented and to never-ever ask Why, What if, Why Not? That prepared them, us, to sit in orderly rows of cubicles and look to the manager and bosses for direction and appropriate behaviors.

I’m not a childhood education expert. I don’t have kids. I don’t even have a pet. And I’ve never stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, either.

However, the skills of communication and collaboration, of team-work and team-building, of helping, of recognizing what makes each child unique as well as what commonalities are shared and, yes, of competition should be taught. Writing, debating, creating, art, theater, rhetoric, painting, drawing, music, athletics especially with team sports, those should be funded once again. These are all activities that help children learn to listen, to understand, to communicate ideas and find common ground, to collaborate and create together and to embrace diversity of ideas, even failures. These are activities that nurture those innate virtues of compassion and empathy.

Standardized tests work well with testing equipment not people.

Teachers, I believe, want the resources and mandates to teach to learn not to pass those tests.

I hope this stirs a discussion.

QSM: Thanks, Zane!

To continue the discussion, I invite you who are reading this post to comment: What do you think should be taught in schools to prepare students to be engaged and productive members of the workplace?

Categories
Engagement Marketing

Employees: Much More than Human Resources

As the face of your brand, employees are your organization’s key contributor to sustainable, competitive differentiation. Think of it this way: product and service innovation can be short-lived in a crowded and commoditized market, but the one thing technology cannot replace and competitors cannot copy is your employees’ relationship with customers.

Here are several great quotes on why employees are critical to an organization’s success.

“When employees are happy, they’re better ambassadors and advocates for the brand. They’re your first point of contact. When you’re at a cocktail party, and you’re talking to some, and they say, ‘I love my company,’ you can’t put a price on that.” Alison DaSilva

“Companies can ignore their internal audience – but that’s as short-sighted as ignoring the external one.” Bill McEwen

“If your organization values the individual, you will inspire the individual to value your organization.” Doug Conant

” … emphasis on people-related issues makes perfect sense in a still-uncertain economy. Building a culture that supports engagement, employee training, leadership development, and high performance is something companies can control, and can mean the difference between growing market share and simply surviving … ”  Rebecca Ray

“The way your employees feel is the way your customers will feel. And if your employees don’t feel valued, neither will your customers.”  Sybil Stershic

“Dispirited, unmotivated, unappreciated workers cannot compete in a highly competitive world.” – Francis Hesselbein

“Everyone wants to be part of something … everyone wants to feel that they are valued, that they made a difference. To the degree we can celebrate our people, that’s our greatest weapon, our greatest tool.” Bob Wood

 

 

 

 

 

Categories
Training & Development

What Do a Business Training Professional and Zumba Fitness Instructor Have in Common?

Quite a bit actually.

Several years ago, I decided to ramp up my exercise and tried Zumba. It took me quite a while to get with the program, so to speak, as participants are not “taught” the dance moves – you just follow the instructor’s moves. I was WAY out of my comfort zone with this, despite the fact that the instructors don’t expect you to follow along perfectly; they just want you to have fun and get fit in the process.

Eventually I became more comfortable with the challenge of following the different dance moves and routines offered by various Zumba instructors. It’s great to get away from my office and enjoy the loud music, the camaraderie in class, and exercising my body as well as my brain.

I take an average of three  Zumba classes a week. Observing different instructors and listening to feedback from attendees, I began to analyze the instructors’ approaches to teaching Zumba and rapport with their classes. The best and most popular instructors share these characteristics:

  • A passion for doing and teaching  Zumba.
  • Smiling and making lots of eye contact.
  • “Connecting” with attendees by facing the class as much, if not more, than they face the mirror; also periodically moving away from the mirror/front of the class and dancing among the attendees.
  • Making the dance moves easy to follow with clear hand signals, verbal cues, and repetitive steps.
  • Encouraging fun and fitness while reinforcing attendees’ participation throughout the class in ways that are most comfortable for them; no one is ever made to feel inept.
  • Preparing for each class by practicing the routines and learning/demonstrating new ones to mix things up a bit.
Gladys Colon, Zumba instructor
Gladys Colon, Zumba instructor

I recently spent time outside of class with Gladys Colon, one of the more popular instructors, to talk about her experience teaching Zumba. I also wanted to let her know how much I enjoyed her class. The more we talked, the more I realized we had much in common as instructors even though our classes are so very different: she teaches Zumba fitness in a gym and I teach marketing workshops in a corporate business setting.

Here’s what we have in common. We both practice as much as possible – regardless of how well we know our subject matter. We intentionally engage our attendees without overwhelming them. We work hard to ensure the people in our classes feel the time they spend with us is worthwhile. Above all, we both share a passion for what we do — whether it’s energizing people through cardio or helping them broaden their marketing acumen.

In what unlikely places do you find professional inspiration?

[With special thanks to my favorite instructors Gladys Colon, Tarnisha “Moe” Sass, Manny Balseiro and Krista Cernansky … you all rock!]

Categories
Engagement

What Happened to the Year of the Employee?

2014 was predicted to be the Year of the Employee with increased competition for talent and continuing attention on employee engagement. But did employee engagement improve in the workplace?

Certainly, the Market Basket story of employees’ successful public (and customer-supported) protest of their ousted CEO illustrated the powerful impact of loyal, engaged employees. Yet according to engagement studies, the level of actively engaged employees still hovers around 30%. For all the expressed interest in in improving engagement, many in charge demonstrate more intention than action.

Mixed results on “The Year of the Employee” were found by leadership coach, Tanveer Naseer:

” … I did see leaders this year who clearly understood not only how to engage and motivate their employees, but also how to manage conflict in today’s faster-paced, connected world, how to foster an environment where our employees succeed and thrive, as well as how we can use our leadership to bring out the best in those under our care.

“Unfortunately, I also saw leaders who tried to side-step any responsibility for the issues that currently plague their organization, with some even arguing how the problem was the fault of those their organization serves, and not a reflection of their leadership or contribution.”

There are also executives for whom engaging employees is based solely on issuing paychecks. I recently learned about a company’s year-end-in-review meeting where the CEO addressed all employees. His conveyed his disappointment in a sluggish bottom line as he admonished employees to work harder in the new year.  There were no words of acknowledgment for employees’ efforts/contributions during the past challenging year and no words of encouragement moving forward. As a result, many of his managers and employees are committed to working harder — to find new jobs elsewhere.

For that company and others like it, 2015 may well be the Year of Employee Burnout and Turnover. Here’s hoping those employees will be successful in finding the organizations that take engagement seriously.

 

 

Categories
Customer service Engagement Training & Development

5 Tips to Keep Employees Engaged During the Holidays

The last few weeks of the calendar year can be stressful in the workplace as people become distracted preparing for the holidays. Employees can be overwhelmed with year-end reporting and planning deadlines just as everyone else seems to be using up the last of their vacation days. And those at work may be so into the holiday frenzy that they’ve mentally checked out.

Here are five ways managers can help employees stay on-task and engaged during the holiday season.

  • Keep employees mission-focused, customer-focused, and connected.
    Respectfully remind employees how year-end projects and planning are critical to your company’s mission and goals. Make time to recognize employees’ individual and collective efforts in taking care of customers and each other as the year winds down.
  • Acknowledge and alleviate seasonal stresses.
    Consider what you can do ahead of time to minimize year-end pressures such as starting your business planning cycle earlier (if feasible) to avoid a planning crunch when fewer people are at work. Or schedule the employee holiday lunch or dinner party in January when there are fewer social activities; this also gives employees something to look forward to after the holidays.
  • Ask employees to share their ideas.
    Go to the source and solicit suggestions from your employees as to what might be done to improve productivity during this time of year — whether in a special discussion at staff meetings or as a project for a designated employee task force.
  • Inspire and de-stress.
    • Invite employees to share with each other how they cope with seasonal work stress … the funniest holiday situation they’ve encountered at work … how they successfully defused a difficult situation with a customer, etc.
    • Give-back to the community by volunteering time as a group to work in a food bank or collect gifts for needy families. To keep such an activity from creating more stress, however, employee involvement must be voluntary with no management or peer pressure regarding time and financial contributions.
    • While bringing holiday sweets to the office is welcome by many, also consider healthy ways to reduce stress. For example, a licensed massage therapist can be hired on-site to provide 10-15 minute back massages for employees or a yoga instructor can lead mini-meditation sessions.
  • Patience, patience, patience.
    Keep in mind the end of the year can be a challenging time for everyone: you, your customers, employees, colleagues, and business partners.

Try one or more of these ideas to help get through the season. When you find what works, you can apply it next year when you go through this all over again. Happy Holidays!

Categories
Customer service Training & Development

A Customer Never Forgets–3 Customer Stories and What They Mean

Impressions of customer service — good and bad — can be long lasting as these three stories illustrate. In this post my marketing colleagues and I share special situations we experienced as customers more than 20 years ago.

“A legendary service experience that touched my heart”
From Toby Bloomberg: “I walked into an Eckerd Drug Store to buy a sympathy card. Before the clerk even rang up the purchase, he took a silk rose from a display at the counter, presented it to me, and said, ‘I’m sorry for your loss. I hope this will cheer you up a little.'”

Toby’s takeaway: There were no dramatic gestures, no casts of thousands, no high cost involved. Simply an elegant approach to ‘service’ between two people. And when you get right down to basics, isn’t that what “legendary service” is all about — people who go the extra mile to connect to the customer?

Take care of the customer and worry about the details later
From Chris Bonney: “It was a Saturday around noon at the Hyatt Woodfield in Chicago for an AMA (American Marketing Association) chapter leadership meeting. Just as our people were sitting down to lunch, the first alarm went off. We were quickly hustled outside by the staff and stayed outdoors for the better part of an hour due to a water emergency.

“A couple of weddings were scheduled to take place at the hotel later that day. One of the brides arrived that morning and, not finding a closet hook high enough to hold her wedding gown off the floor, she hung it on a fire system water sprinkler. The weight eventually broke the sprinkler head, spewing rusty water all over the gown in her room and other rooms on the floor that were linked on that sprinkler water line. The water also leaked through to rooms below the bride’s floor. The hotel could have easily blamed the bride for her misfortune and the inconvenience caused to everyone else in the hotel. But instead they summoned a limousine, took the bride and her mother across to the Nordstrom’s at Woodfield Mall to buy a new dress.”

Chris’s takeaway: I don’t know if the hotel was insured for this kind of thing or not. But they knew that it was cheaper for the bride to get a new dress so that her wedding could proceed and worry about the details later. They recovered the situation without embarrassing the bride and her family. (Perhaps as a result, hotels posted warning signs to not use sprinkler heads as hangers.)
Helping a customer in a difficult situation

This is my story: My husband and I were traveling to Boston to attend a conference for his work when I had a medical emergency on the plane. Upon landing at the airport, I was immediately taken off the plane in a special ambulance gurney and we were whisked away to the hospital. While filling out our medical forms in the ER, my husband and I suddenly looked at each other to ask, “What happened to our luggage?!” given we left the plane in a hurry.

My husband took a taxi to the conference hotel while I was in surgery and explained our situation. The Marriott Copley Hotel staff called Logan airport to find and place a hold on our luggage. They also arranged for a hotel courtesy car driver to take my husband back to the airport to collect the luggage, drop him off at the hospital to be with me after surgery, and then place our luggage in the hotel room for when my husband returned.

My takeaway: In our situation, we were guests who arrived at the hotel with a problem that had nothing to do with the hotel itself. Yet the front desk staff showed their compassion and concern by going the extra step take care of us.

My colleagues and I had different customer experiences that share a common theme: a favorable impression made by customer service providers who were empathetic to their customers’ situation.