Sign placed at the entrance of a crowded sidewalk cafe.

*“Do What You Say You Will Do”

Source: Credibility by James Kouzes and Barry Posner (Jossey Bass)

Check out my suggestions for finding hidden opportunities from unhappy customers, featured in the September 2007 release from the Society for Advancement of Consulting ® (SAC®).  Members worldwide were asked to examine the issue of how to “save” unhappy customers.

On a recent flight from Newark to San Francisco, I witnessed two scenarios:

First, in the crush of people swarming the Elite line to board the plane, a woman in front of me stopped to pick up a coin she noticed on the floor.  She smiled, apologized to me and explained “I pick up all the coins I find – each of them represents something good. I journal about every coin and what I was doing when I found it.  Someday I’ll give this to my grandson so he can know more about me.”
 
Second, during the flight, my seatmate had a heated exchange with the flight attendant because the movie being shown was not the one listed in the catalogue. Despite the attendant’s explanation that the movie wasn’t loaded onto the plane, the passenger kept demanding that she deserved better treatment because she was an Elite customer (of course, so were all the rest of us within earshot).  She grudgingly settled down, mumbling that she was going to bring this to the attention of executives at the airline.
 
While the above events may seem unrelated, in fact they represent two ways that people handle the same difficult circumstances. Whether the situation is travel, addressing competitive challenges, or dealing with an unexpected changes in your organization, we can either find whatever opportunity there is to discover or we can get stuck on the negatives.  Two sides of the same coin…. which side do you focus on?