Last week I experienced one of the most stressful days of my life.
On Friday, I was booked to make a conference presentation in Auckland, New Zealand. On Thursday morning, I arrived at the airport at 7.00 am to take my 8.30 am Business Class flight from Brisbane with Emirates Airlines. When I handed over my passport, the staffer handed it back and said this was not my passport. Frantic, I looked at the passport to discover it was my wife's! I then searched through the wallet that normally holds both of our passports to discover I didn't have my passport.
To cut a long story short, I'd lost (or we think had stolen) my passport. I missed the Emirates flight.
For the remainder of the day, among the panic and stress, I managed to eventually be handed a new passport by the Brisbane Passport office at 4.00 pm. While this is another whole story in itself, I'd sincerely like to thank them for their efforts. I'd also like to thank my mate Ric Willmot who kindly opened up his Brisbane based home office to enable me to print and fax documents, and helped courier me around to a local bank and police station to get required documents and signatures!
I arrived in my New Zealand hotel around 1.00 am, hugely relieved that I'd been able to pull off a miracle to be able to speak at the conference the following day.
But this is all a precursor to the real story I'd like to share.
I was due to return on the Emirates flight at around 6.00 pm on the Saturday afternoon. I rang Emirates around 1.00 pm to confirm my seat, given that I'd not been able to take the first leg of the flight.
I was informed that because I'd missed the outward bound flight, the entire ticket had been cancelled. I'd need to purchase another one-way ticket.
It didn't matter what I said, this was the rule - miss the outward bound flight and that's it.
During our lengthy 'conversation' on this issue, the Emirates staff member
began to say "If you read the rules of your ticket..."
I interrupted her at this point to ask whether there was room for any compassion for the circumstances I'd experienced. I'd lost (probably had stolen) my passport, the Emirates staff at Brisbane airport had seen my predicament, and I had purchased a Business Class airfare. None of this was enough to enable them to prevent a rule kicking in that required me to spend more than $1000 extra on a one-way ticket.
The single-most important secret to customer service? In a word - compassion.
