Don’t you hate it when you missed collecting your parcel & the delivery person leaves a collection slip for you to collect from their depot?

This happened to me last Friday, where I missed the collection of my parcel.

The post office closes at 7.00 pm and I had to go to the office to carry out my Unconventional Sales Strategy training for the whole day, so I could not collect it until I was done with the seminar which ended at around 5.45 pm.

By the time I was done with the session and catching up with the team on the day’s tasks it was already 6.30 pm.

I rushed to the lift, managed to catch one quickly, got to the ground floor, sprinted to my car, looked at my watch and it was 6.45 pm.

With 15 minutes to spare and the post office within a reasonable distance, I stepped the pedal to the metal (within speed limits of course).

But there was the dinner time traffic that slowed my advance.

After a slight crawl, I finally managed to get past the bottleneck and it was clear roads ahead.

I immediately zipped my car into the post office’s parking lot, jumped out of my car while fiddling with my mask.

With my goal in sight the big welcoming doors, I sprinted to it, pushed the doors… only to find that it wouldn’t budge. It was locked with a big “closed” sign on my face.

I looked at my watch it was 7.02 pm. There was still staff on the premise, I gestured to a man, and he came to the door saying “Sorry we’re closed”.

I said “Tolong la bang (Please help)” in a nice begging tone, only to be faced with a stone-cold “no”.

He then walked away from me and left me there at the door.

I was mad and frustrated. What was the lesson here?

Well for one make more leeway for delays.

But the lesson that the post office had to learn, was to instill the core values which they proudly preach themselves and on their website. The key one being “empathy” in this case.

Where was the empathy? There must be some leeway where the team can empathize with their customers!

I would understand if it was 10-15minutes, but 2 minutes and the door probably wasn’t even locked for long!

It’s all part of bringing humanity and heart into our brands and businesses. Sometimes we have big ideas but only do lip service on what our values are.

Because what matters most is the customer’s experience of you as a business and a brand.

Is your company & team living up to its values?