BY BOB GOODNOUGH
What business are you in?
The journey is just as important as the destination.
So reads the publicity for Via Rail, which provides rail passenger service across Canada. Read further, and you will find promises of comfortable and secure travel with much less stress than travel by air or highway.
I’m sure they deliver on those promises most of the time. But, as Murphy’s Law declares, if something can go wrong, it will, usually at the worst possible moment.
Recently, on the Saturday of a long weekend, a trainload of people departed Montréal with Québec City as their destination. Partway there, the brand-new train broke down. People sat on the train without any idea of what was wrong or how long it would take until they started moving again.
Crews were working to fix whatever the problem was, and sometimes they had to turn off the power, which meant there was no air conditioning and the toilets wouldn’t flush. The onboard crew passed out snacks and drinks until they ran out. There was no other food on board, as the trip should only take three hours. Eventually, some of the passengers got impatient, and at least one of the crew members got a little testy and took away a passenger’s cell phone.
Finally, another train drew up alongside, and the stranded passengers could board it to complete their journey. There were other passengers on this train, so many had to stand. But they were given pizzas to eat. They were ten hours late when they arrived in Québec City.
The person standing at the counter…
is the reason you have
a job.
What went wrong? It appears the management wasn’t on board with the slogans of the publicity department. They thought their business was to run these machines up and down the tracks, and the people riding in them were incidental to that purpose.
Management has attempted to make amends for the fiasco, but I’m not sure they have grasped the enormity of the problem. The people on this particular trip have been posting on social media and talking to the news media; people across Canada have heard negative information about this one trip.
When our daughter started working at McDonald’s, the first thing she was told was, “The person standing at the counter waiting to order is not there to interrupt your job routine. That person is the reason you have a job.” That was more than 30 years ago. They have tinkered with the menu during that time, but the principle that the customer comes first has remained unchanged. Yes, crisp fries, hot coffee, and all the other menu items are important, but only if people are lined up to buy them.
Tim Horton’s is Canada’s largest fast-food chain. They used to sell mostly donuts and coffee and built a huge business on that foundation. Their menu is much larger now, but they still operate on the basis that the customer should get fast and cheerful service.
Robin’s Donuts used to be a major competitor of Tim Horton’s. Then, the business was sold to new owners who needed to find a way to pay off the debt they had incurred buying the business. They came up with what seemed like a logical plan; the one expense that could be reduced was the payroll.
After that, you could be the first in line at Robin’s drive-through, order your morning coffee and donut, and you would get served as soon as one of the two workers had a spare moment from serving the in-store customers. It didn’t take long to figure out that you could be the 6th vehicle in line at a Tim Horton’s drive-through and get served in about the same amount of time. And the person who served you would be a lot more cheerful.
The stores of both companies were much the same size; Robin’s food products were just as good as Tim’s, but Robin’s stores kept shutting down, one after the other. What happened? Robin’s thought their business was making donuts and coffee. Tim’s thought their business was making sure their customers had a pleasant experience when buying their donuts and coffee.
Whatever business we are in, our potential clients have other options. The success of our business depends on making them feel good about dealing with us. If we do that, they are more likely to come back again and to recommend us to others. If their experience is unpleasant, they will tell others about that, too.
Even dentists have caught on to this. When I was a boy, it seemed to me that dentists thought the only thing they had to do was to take care of teeth. It wasn’t a big concern if the patient complained of pain during a procedure; after all, the important thing was to fix their teeth. For years, I avoided seeing a dentist unless a tooth was causing me more pain than anything he might do. In more recent years, the dentists I have gone to have been gentle and patient and took the time to explain everything they did. I even had a root canal done a few years ago that was virtually painless.
The reader is more important than the writer.
As a writer, I don’t get a second chance to explain what I really meant to say. My business is not to impress a reader with how smart I am and how big a vocabulary I have; it is to convey a message as clearly as possible. I need to edit my writing to eliminate the little details that seem interesting but distract from the message. Unnecessary words need to be deleted, ambiguous words replaced, and sentence order rearranged. That is work. But it is worth it when readers say they have understood and appreciated what I wrote.