Waiting in line at the security checkpoint at O’Hare airport yesterday, I could not help but notice some improvements they have made. For those of you that haven’t traveled recently, let me catch you up. In order for me to get through security without being stopped, I have to take off my shoes, belt, and sweater, take my laptop out of the case and put it in its own bin, and take my plastic zip-lock bag containing my less than 3oz bottles of liquid out of my luggage and put it through separately. Once I am through security with boarding pass in hand, I have to get dressed again, and pack everything back in its proper bags before I can be on my way to the gate. Add in the amount of people (a lot) who do not know the rules and have to walk back through a second time, and you can imagine the delay, and worst the cluster of people bent over (not a pretty site) trying to get their shoes back on right in the way of where you need to walk.
The airport did not make the rules about the shoes, laptops, and liquids, but they did what they could to adapt to the situation they were given. Since last month, they put a new area of benches with tables outside of the checkpoint where people can put their things together and put their shoes back on. It made things a lot less clumsy and crowded. It made me, the flyer (customer), less frustrated with the process.
Being able to adapt to the situation at hand is a necessary component to keeping your customers happy. We can’t control the economy, the price of gold, of the leather your vendor didn’t ship you, but we can react and adapt to keep our customers happy. And the real key is to figure out what adaptations you need to make much faster than it took the airports to figure it out.
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