Customer delight

It started raining.  Flight no AI 950 was on the tarmac awaiting signal from the Air-traffic control for take off. I had settled in my seat 1A with only 4 passengers in the Business Class.  Unmindful of the safety announcement, I was making phone call to someone, whom I failed to contact despite having spent the entire 35 days of my vacation. May be to improve the customer friendly image, nobody insisted me to switch off my mobile in the middle of my conversation.

Expectedly, the leader of cabin crew was one Mrs SR ,an approaching a senior citizen, although she looked much younger to me, may be by the way she had carried herself.

Being the leader of the crew, she was in charge of inflight service for the Business Class.   Barely I switched off my mobile when the flight was speeding on the run way and took off swiftly.  Somehow I felt that the take off was very quick and unusual. I thought the captain would have gone for a quick take off in view of the wet runway due to rains.

Mrs S.R went to the public address system and announced, "dear passengers, in a few minutes from now, the popular tamil movie "KO" will be played.... and especially for those who enjoy tamil movies, please take pleasure in watching the same..  the head set is kept behind the seat pouch in front of you..."

Some how the system played truant and failed to start... She tried to remove the DVD and placed it again but it failed to start..
With an apologetic tone, she came again on the public address system saying.."well there appears to be some problem, we beg your pardon for not able to play the movie.. you may however watch other programs from our inflight Entertainment system.."

I gave a mischievous look to her.

Mrs SR greeted me and asked me if I would like to try some hot drink.  "hot drink? ok .. can I have some Red Bull"?.....
"Oh sorry sir" she regretted that 'Chennai sector does not serve Red Bull like the Mumbai sector which is run by Air India whereas Chennai is handled by the erstwhile Indian Airlines'.

When she asked me an alternate choice of a drink, I thought for a while and said "well, can I have some fresh juice"?

Again, she felt bad that she could not fulfill my request as there was no fresh juices in the flight kitchen.  With a sudden glow in her face she asked me, " would you like to have some fresh lemon juice, only if you can give me some 10 minutes to make it.."?

I said yes to her.

After about 5 minutes, an young steward came to me with Lemon Juice mixed with sugar salt and little pepper in it.

I drank it.   It was quite nice and refreshing.

Later on, after I have taken my veg meal, Mrs SR came to me and confessed that for a moment she did not know what to offer when I asked for fresh juice and that she caught up with an idea that she could use the lemon that was available in the flight kitchen on that day.

I felt special & delighted with the serving of lemon juice, although my expectation of  juice was from other fruits!   The reason for my elated feeling could be because, no one else was getting so much attention on that day...

My mind was thinking about the new mantra about 'customer delight' in marketing parlance.. about which even I used to goad my marketing guys!

Well today, I got the answer as to how you can achieve customer delight...

Yes!  Customer delight happens when you exhibit service beyond the call of duty!