Why do we do this?

I had the opportunity to take a cab ride this week from my hotel to the airport. It was 4:30 a.m., I was tired, and in no mood to talk. But my driver would have none of that. He talked about cabs being robbed, his kids, his grand kids, the last family reunion they had in Atlanta, and how he loved to “ride” in his cab because he was too poor to have a car when he was “coming up.” Cab driving was his second career; his first was working for 34 years at the Swift meat packing plant. He’d been driving for 20 years.

He made what could have been a dreary, mundane experience terrific, just by talking to me about him. He was eighty years old.

It occurred to me that it’s easy to forget why we mess with customer experience and customer service. It’s not about improving efficiency, increasing profitability, decreasing attrition, or keeping a high first call resolution percentage. Those are metrics, ways of keeping score. It’s about helping people live successful and prosperous lives in a world where that’s difficult to do. My cab driver has spent 80 years on this planet working hard, raising his six kids, putting four of them through college, dealing with high gas prices, factory closings, health issues, and job loss. I doubt that there’s a lot of space in his world to think of or care about banking or payments.

Maybe instead of worrying about the metrics that help us keep score or on trying to “surprise and delight” when we can’t really deliver some of the most basic services, we should just work hard to get out of people’s way so that they can do what they need to do. Maybe not being noticed is the highest level of service that we can provide.

Setting realistic goals in terms of customer experience and understanding the customer in their context may be the best way to deliver the level of service that is really valuable to the customer, so people can get on with the stuff in their lives that really matters.