For the month of April I am excited to be featuring Michelle Romanica for my Passion Profile. The first week we learned why Michelle is so passionate about the “human connection”. Then last week we discovered what traits best describe Michelle and what traits she admires most in others.
Once again, Michelle is first a foremost a master of the “human connection”. As a Business Outcomes Facilitator with the KeyChange Institute she supports business leaders in achieving their desired business outcomes with a process that engages the science behind learning. It aligns thought processing and behaviour choices with specific desired business outcomes. Michelle is also a Producer for the Customer Experience Show; an internet talk radio show on a quest to raise the awareness of Customer Experience practices and principles and why customer centricity is a must for long term sustainability.
Speaking of the Customer Experience Show, I had the great honour of discussing Making Profits with Purpose for a Better Customer Experience on last week’s show, that was fun!
This week we will find out what Michelle’s response was to my question “What accomplishment are you most proud of?”
Michelle: “I am most proud of an event that took place at Pearson Airport on Christmas Day a few years ago. But before I tell you about it, I’d like to give you some background.
In my various customer service roles, I always knew how I wanted my customers to feel when interacting with me, but things didn’t always turn out that way. I wasn’t the only customer service agent feeling this. Our training involved what to say and do for customers, not how we made them feel. I prided myself in excellence so I said and did all the right things. But it didn’t always get me the results I wanted. And sometimes it left people really angry and upset, and I didn’t quite understand why? I carried out my job exactly the way I had been asked to and was polite, in doing so. This led to a lengthy period of introspection and self growth – not always a walk in the park! But from this, I learned that I could change myself to better control the outcome of my interactions. I worked hard at honing abilities and skills that I felt better served me. Without these abilities, the outcome would have been quite different and I would not have experienced the joy I received from the event that took place that Christmas.
So what some of those abilities? (can’t give away all my trade secrets! LOL)
1) The ability to suspend my thoughts around how I was reacting to everything that was happening around me.
2) The ability to replace those thoughts with thoughts about what the customers must be thinking and feeling in those moments.
3) The ability to look for and consider possibilities that are beyond the obvious, before making what seems like an obvious decision.
4) The ability to recognize and I have a choice in how I respond to everything around me (people and events).
And now, (finally!) to tell you about that event…..
By now, you probably have figured out my career was in the airline industry. The Halifax flight was almost finished the boarding process when I received a call, ordering me to go onboard and remove 25 passengers from the flight. There are safety regulations in place that call for 1 flight attendant per 20 customers for that particular aircraft. We were one flight attendant short. I had a very short window of time to not only see that 25 people were physically off the aircraft, I also had to determine who I was going to have come off, and I no alternative flight to offer them for 3 days.
I don’t think I have to tell you how our customers reacted. And the details of what took place are not really important to this story. What was important was how they felt at the end of the day when we parted. What brought me joy were the sincere words of thanks and hugs I received. I had managed to preserve the spirit of the day for them. That situation could have so easily turned out differently and it would have, had it happened earlier in my career.
And, oh yes…..I used those same abilities to make a miracle happen. We were able to pull together an extra flight to get everyone home that Christmas night.”
Curious about my previous Passion Profiles? Cheers to Dan Rockwell, Eric Jacques, Ted Coine, Tim Sanchez, Dean van Leeuwen, S. Max Brown, David McQueen, “Write”, Linda Ireland and Ron Dimon.
