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‘Hi, on Saturday we fly home, but want to climb a mountain in the morning. Would we be able to have a late checkout, so we can have showers when we get back?’
It seemed like a simple request. It turned out it was not. By the end, I’d seen the difference between a human elevating a good experience, and a human needing to rescue a poor process.
I was lucky enough to be in Cape Town for the week, experiencing everything city has to offer. And by ‘everything’, I mean a business hotel, a pre-arranged taxi, and a local contact centre.
Even though that was a lot of fun, I was quite keen to have a few hours outside before flying back. And given South Africa is famous for having a very large, very table-shaped mountain, that felt like the place to be heading on the final morning.
There was just one problem. It’s a long way up and a hot day. No-one – least of all my fellow passengers – wants me to do that and then get on a plane for twelve hours without a shower in between.
So, a couple of evenings before, we spoke to the reception
Hi, on Saturday we fly home, but want to climb a mountain in the morning. Would we be able to have a late checkout, so we can have showers when we get back?
Erm… sure, I can give you the room until 1pm
Ah, that won’t be late enough, we won’t be back until 2. Could we use the spa?
Yes, of course! That’s no problem at all. You just need to book in, but they’re closed now. Ask again in the morning
Satisfied we had a plan, we set off for the best steak I’ve ever had.
The next morning, we went back to reception – a different group of people this time – to book into the spa.
Hi, we’d just like to book in to the spa for showers Saturday afternoon please
Oh…. You can’t do that. They don’t do that.
Ah… can we pay?
Yes, that’s fine, you can pay. Let me phone them’
We wait
Yeah, no, they don’t do that anymore.
But your colleague said…
That’s wrong, they must have changed their process yesterday. Sorry.
Now, for the sake of brevity and your sanity, I’m going to shortcut things a little here.
Over a three-day period, we asked the reception about seven times what we could do. Every time, we got a different answer. You can have a room. You can’t have a room. You can use the spa. The spa is out of bounds. Unless you pay. But actually, you can’t pay.
In fact, we had the same conversation each day about taking a lunch with us, too. Of course we can do you a lunch! Ah, actually, we don’t do lunches. We could do you a breakfast? Actually, we don’t do that either. But here, we’ve made a lunch for you!
The morning of the hike arrived. We had no plans for showers. We had no plans for lunch. And we had a very real chance of not being allowed on the plane due to anti-social behaviour.
As we left for the walk, we thought we’d try one more time, repeating the question we’d had all week. This time, the manager overheard us and stepped in.
‘Of course! No problem at all. We’ll get you a lunch made now, just five minutes. We’ll keep one of the rooms for you until 4pm. We’ll have it ready, laid out with separate towels for you all. And it’s on us, no charge.’
As we walked (/crawled) back in later, he personally handed us the room key.
Although of course, there were no towels.
People can elevate an experience, bringing a warm, human touch to an otherwise-unremarkable process. But, too often, the human is actually there to save the day, covering up for a poor, or non-existent process.
Leaders don’t always hear about this, because they only see the end result, the satisfied customer, and have no idea how regularly their people are rescuing them.
It’s this that creates inconsistency in an experience. And when it comes down to it, consistency is the thing that matters most to us.
If you don’t believe me, put yourself in my shoes, stood at the top of Table Mountain, waiting to get the cable car back down. If I told you it would probably be safe, depending on who’s pressing the buttons that day, would you get in?
Thanks for reading this article, I really hope you enjoyed it. You can subscribe to my monthly newsletter below, find me in picture form on Instagram @johnjsills, or in work mode at The Foundation and LinkedIn.
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