I started my customer service career 30 years ago, working for an airline in the lost luggage department.
English is my second language, and at the time I was still working on becoming more fluent. I was learning how to communicate with more confidence while helping customers who were often having a really bad day.
Almost nobody walks into the lost luggage office happy to see you. A suitcase may hold gifts or memories that cannot easily be replaced. I learned quickly that to the airline; it may have been a missing bag. To the customer, it could mean much more.
People in customer service naturally want to solve problems. But when a customer is upset, jumping straight into problem-solving can work against us.
Before customers are ready to hear the solution, they may first need to know that someone understands why they are frustrated. That is where listening matters. Listening to understand means paying attention to the words, the emotion behind them and what the customer is really telling us.
Validation does not mean agreeing with everything a customer says. It means acknowledging the experience: “I understand why this is frustrating” or “I can see why this matters to you.”
The 55% Match
One customer from those days has stayed with me for more than 30 years.
He had returned from an international trip, but his luggage did not arrive. This was the mid-1990s. There were no AirTags or apps to follow a suitcase in real time, and the identification tag had come off his bag.
When unidentified luggage was found, employees entered a description of the suitcase and its contents into a tracking system. We compared that information with reports from passengers looking for missing bags.
Generally, anything below 60% match was unlikely to be the right bag. I found one at 55%.
I could have moved on. But something about the description made me look further, and I knew how much finding that luggage mattered.
So, I requested that the bag be sent from the other country where it had been found so we could inspect it.
Eventually, it arrived. It was his.
That day, I found more than a piece of lost luggage. I found something much more valuable: an understanding of what can happen when you are invested in turning a difficult customer experience into a better one.
I could not change the fact that his luggage had been lost. But I could choose what happened next. I could keep looking, ask one more question and go beyond the obvious answer because the outcome mattered to him.
Exceptional service does not always begin with everything going right. Sometimes, it begins when something has gone wrong and someone decides to care enough to make the rest of the experience better.
Service Culture Shows Up in the Moment
Service culture is not what we put on a poster. It shows up when a customer is frustrated, when the answer is not obvious, and when an employee decides how much ownership to take.
This connects to the N.I.C.E. framework I have written about previously: Notice, Interact, Care and Execute.
Notice what is happening beyond the transaction. Interact by asking questions and listening to understand. Care enough to recognize why the situation matters. Then, Execute by taking ownership and working toward resolution.
Sometimes, we are so eager to get to Execute that we move too quickly past Notice, Interact and Care. We may solve the technical issue and still leave the customer feeling like no one really listened.
For leaders, service culture has to be built into hiring, training and coaching. We can teach systems and procedures, but we also need people who are curious, who want to help and who stay engaged when the answer is not obvious.
Technology has changed since I worked behind that lost luggage counter. The basics have not.
Customers may not remember which system we used. They will remember whether someone took the time to understand why it mattered.
Before you solve the problem, make sure the customer knows you heard them.