Experiences Spring Break 2006

No, this is not an MTV Spring Break type of post so if you are looking for some excitement, look elsewhere. I have been on spring break with my family in the Gatlinburg - Pigeon Forge area over the last few days and have found myself tuned in to the importance of quality service more than ever. We all know in credit union land that service is at the essence of who we are and what we deliver. So, some highlights are as follows (don't worry I won't post a long slideshow of family pictures on here).

• Went to a family friendly comedy show called the Comedy Barn. These people get it. They are the masters of making you feel special and word of mouth marketing. Their two top selling souvenirs are a $9.99 red Comedy Barn t-shirt and a DVD of the show you watched. The t-shirt comes at a low price as long as you promise to wear it at least once during your stay in the area. Since they brought this to my attention I saw a ton of shirts - many hiking trails at the National Park. The DVD is guaranteed to have you in the DVD. They have many of the audience members participate in the show and they also have all of these cameras filming the audience during the show. How is that for personalization? People were lined up to buy these at intermission. The staff made you feel welcome and a part of their family. Something we can all learn from.
• A tale of two restaurant horror stories and how they responded. We went to the Cracker Barrel in Pigeon Forge (store #360) and waited one hour for our food. Our waitress was apologetic and promised that the manager was going to stop over and talk to us. No manager ever showed. Plus, my wife's order was wrong - which they corrected but again took way too long. The next night, we went to McDonalds (didn't want to risk waiting anywhere an hour for our food) and I ordered a fish sandwich without tartar sauce. The young lady at the register had entered my order correctly (displayed on my receipt) and when I went back up she apologized immediately for the mix-up. She rushed the order and said she would deliver a fresh sandwich to my table. She delivered. Then a few minutes later the manager comes over and says the young lady at the register had told him about the mix-up and he wanted to apologize. He then delivered three free apple pies. He noticed that we had four at the table and then ran back and got one more. McDonalds, which gets a bad rap many times, trumped Cracker Barrel on fixing the problem. Many times our quality of service is measured by how we fix problems not by how we deliver every day service. I was impressed with the two employees at McDonalds, plus my kids loved the apple pies, okay so did I.

Lessons learned - personalize the experience, a real life lesson on how to use viral marketing (how many will show off their Comedy Barn DVD to others?), and the value of fixing the problem to make a wow impression. All can be applied to improve our credit unions.