Empowering Employees to Excel at Service

HOW MUCH DOES your company care for its customers? Have you demonstrated that care lately? Take this example from Frontier Airlines, which picked up the tab recently for customer meals. This instance of an employee going the distance was noteworthy enough to make the mainstream news and go viral online.

One Frontier flight en route from Washington D.C. to Denver, already delayed by an hour, was forced to land in Cheyenne, Wyoming because of bad weather. After sitting on the tarmac for a couple hours, the passengers began to get agitated.

And hungry.

That’s when Captain Gerhard Brandner made an announcement over the intercom: “Ladies and gentleman, Frontier Airlines is known for being one of the cheapest airlines in the U.S., but your captain is not cheap. I just ordered pizza for the entire plane.”

Captain Brandner called Dominos, met them outside the security checkpoint, and delivered 50 pizzas to the plane. As recounted by the captain, “I was getting hungry and we are kind of a big family here at Frontier; we take care of each other, and I figured it was time to take care of my passengers.”

Writing for Forbes, Stan Phelps draws two lessons from the story that every business marketer or owner could adopt.

1. You can do well by doing good. Acts of kindness resonate with customers and have the potential to create a huge ripple effect through social media and traditional news.

2. Empower employees to go the extra mile. Most employees care about their customers but are limited in their ability to demonstrate it by strict company policies. Give your employees the authority to do what it takes to satisfy customers.