Yesterday I witnessed insanity at the Hertz Gold check-in counter in San Francisco. The businessman next to me wanted to change the credit card his car would be billed to. He handed the woman at the counter an American Express card. She quickly informed him that it had expired.
“Didn’t you hear me miss? I told you to put my account on that card. How many times to I need to explain it to you. I want the bill on my American Express and not my Visa. Got it? Or do I have to explain it again to you?”
“Yes, sir, I understand. But American Express is telling me that your card is not valid. So we can’t use it.”
“Lady, I don’t know what your problem is today. But put it on that card.
He finally gave her the Visa card and stormed out all indignant. The indignant part was astounding.
“Wow, you were the picture of calm with that guy,” I said. “Not sure I could have held my cool with someone like that.”
The man waiting on me said, “That’s nothing. We had a person in here this morning whose driver’s license had expired and he yelled at us for not reminding him that he had to renew it. I told him we weren’t the department of motor vehicles. But the guy continued on and said, ‘Don’t you people realize I’m a Gold Club member?’”
Like being a Gold Club member has anything to do with him taking responsibility to get his driver’s license renewed.
“How do you do it,” I asked the Hertz people at the counter. “How do you handled such crazy rants from insane people all the time?”
“It’s our job,” they said. “We stay calm and remember it’s just a job.”
Front line employees are the ones who most influence how we feel about brands. And on most days their jobs border on insanity. Maybe more of us marketers should work the front lines for even just a week a year. Seeing these unsung customer heroes at work at Hertz makes the “we try harder” tag line more meaningful than ever before.
P.S. — Oh Canada, thank you to the folks at Raincoast Books in Canada for such a nice review of Beyond Buzz. Canadians, some of the best people to have an interesting conversation with, seem to be liking what the book has to say. Merci and thanks again.