Here’s post #3 in a connected series of events.
First, I wrote a post about trust which, from what I saw and heard (traffic, comments, feedback) was well-received. Then, connected to that post, I received a totally unexpected gift from a friend, which itself generated another post about delight, and I spent most of Friday on a real high thanks to this delightful gift and the real generosity it showed.
At the end of the day Friday, just as the skies opened up with yet another downpour, a little something brought me down a notch: I discovered that I (boneheadedly) left my coat on the train that morning, and it was lost.
So here’s post #3 in the series, because I just got my coat back.
Yes, it’s true. I was sure I had left my coat on the train on Friday morning, so I called up the MTA on Saturday to register the lost coat. I figured it was long gone. A medium black Banana Republic coat on the commuter train on a Friday morning…seemed like it would quickly find another home, and my faith in the MTA lost and found system wasn’t too great either.
Imagine my surprise when I got a phone call today from the MTA Lost and Found department. “I believe we have your coat, sir. We just need you to come in before 6pm to verify and pick it up.” Boy was I wrong about the MTA and their lost and found.
I rushed to Grand Central at the end of the day, and, lo and behold, Jason who mans the MTA lost and found went in the back and returned with my coat. I filled out a short form, gave a copy of my driver’s license, and I was on my way. I feel like I won the karmic lottery.
My only choice, then, is to put something positive back out into the world, but I need your help to create it: we need a blog or a community that holds up wonderful, daily, surprising, delightful, surprising examples of things that works. We need more things that works and need to celebrate these small and big daily victories, and for Jason at the MTA Lost and Found Department, we need a space to celebrate the people on the front lines who create delightful customer experiences (but who, ironically, often find themselves buried somewhere deep in the org chart). Unfortunately, the thingsthatwork URLs seem to be taken, but I’m sure there’s a blog waiting for someone to make this happen. For example:
- That cellphone rep who helped you sort out international calling plans. Things that work.
- Amazon giving a guarantee on price drops on items bought from their store, and getting $300 back a month after buying a TV. Things that work.
- The airline check-in agent who talked the gate agent into keeping the flight open for another 10 minutes so you wouldn’t miss a wedding abroad. Things that work.
(oh, those are all real examples).
Please, start here in the comments section with your ideas. But wouldn’t it be fun to create a crowdsourced conversation celebrating things that are so positive, unexpected, and important? Go ahead, kick it off.
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I can imagine how you felt when recovering your coat but I can also imagine how Jason felt… as I am sure that for him, your case was a little victory out of many cases of people shouting, being angry or just sad as they didn’t get to recover their belongings.
So first I think it is very important to make his day with a great “Thank you” and secondly, whenever it happens not to recover our stuff we kind of need to emphasize with what he has to go through daily.
As for a system to say “Thank you” nicely… that sounds lovely. I suggest that we invent a tag for that and whenever somebody wants to say Thank You on his blog to use that tag for the blogpost. From there on to aggregate all the blogposts using a certain tag should be easy. 🙂