My Face Broke the Machine
The vast majority of us have been voracious consumers this holiday season according to a recent Gallup poll. We’re buying gifts and experiences at a record pace. Riding alongside all this consumer spending are myriad customer service stories—some positive and some that miss the mark of service excellence.
I like to tell customer service stories because maintaining a maniacal focus on the customer is one of the three main tenets of any continuous improvement practice. Unfortunately, businesses and teams routinely lose sight of the customer as their eyes turn inward to internal politics, resource fights, and broken processes—especially in times of high stress like the holidays. My periodic Muses on customer service are designed to turn the reader’s eye back toward what’s most important in business—delighting the customer.
So here goes. Last week, I used our return flight experience at LGA as a tool to shine a light on the importance of communication. This week, I’d like you to join me in the security line prior to that same flight for a mildly amusing, extraordinarily frustrating experience with CLEAR—the service that’s designed to reduce the stress of making one’s way through security.
As the New York City skies were threatening, we decided to make our way to LGA early. After a smooth Uber ride from the city, we exited the car and made our way to the CLEAR line to begin the security screening process. Upon arrival, we were informed by the agent that we needed to upgrade our profiles to their new NextGen Identity+ system. Her tone of voice and language implied that change was something that we should have been expecting and prepared for. We were totally unaware as we had not received any communications from CLEAR regarding the change. Strike one.
Since we had arrived early, we had no issues with a slight delay to upgrade, so we proceeded entering our personal information into the kiosk. My wife’s experience was smooth. The system found her immediately, scanned her face, and voilà—her upgrade was complete. I was using the kiosk next to her and the system found me, but when the machine scanned my face, the spinning wheel of death appeared, and after a 60 second timeout it served up a message that my “face could not be matched-try again.” Ugh.
After failure #1, the agent took me to three other machines, certain that the issue was with their machines. Various supervisors got involved along the way, but none of the staff seemed interested in finding a solution. They had clearly (pun intended) encountered the issue before, but their attention quickly turned to getting me out of their hair instead of troubleshooting. All I can surmise is that the known solution was a heavier lift than anyone was willing to expend energy on. It was mid-afternoon and the usual crush of holiday travel was nowhere to be found, so it seemed odd that the team was so eager to get rid of me.
So on the direction of supervisor #3, Linda and I were whisked to the front of the security line and were handed off to TSA. Curious, I turned to the CLEAR agent one last time and asked if I would need to go through the same process next time we flew. She curtly said “yes,” turned, and bolted away—clearly glad to be rid of me (again, pun intended).
Since the encounter with CLEAR at LGA, I’ve received no communication from the company about my experience. Their systems know (or should know) that I encountered an issue upgrading to their fancy new NextGen Identity+ product and I should have received an apology communication along with a remedy. For a business that is built around convenience and premium service for frequent travelers, CLEAR failed on two primary dimensions of service excellence: communication and customer care. As TSA continues to deploy improved scanning technology (e.g., new scanners can now “see” your baggie of liquids so there’s no need to take them out), CLEAR cannot afford to alienate loyal customers through indifference and half-baked technology rollouts.
Continuous improvement is based on three primary tenets: identifying & minimizing waste, respecting people, and maintaining a maniacal focus on the customer. My advice today is this: use the holiday shopping season to look for examples of service excellence and service failure. Use the data you collect to aid in improving the customer focus within your organization. If you’re a leader, after the holidays, ask your team members to recount the examples of service excellence and failure they encountered and then brainstorm on how those experiences can be used to invigorate your company’s commitment to service excellence.
