Surely everyone is entitled to excellent customer service regardless of mobility?

This blog post comes to you on the back of my 4 months of reduced mobility from a dislocated knee.  I knew the recovery road was going to be a long and painful one but I still had a life to lead not forgetting a business to run.

During my months on crutches I could not remain office bound so I decided that I was going to carry out my required meetings etc as normal but I would give myself extra time for using public transport.

My first mission was to travel by coach, one I was not relishing as I have done this journey many times and to be honest I have never felt a valued customer.  I turned up early for the coach to avoid causing any unnecessary problems for the drivers by delaying them.  In fact the bus in question was actually running over 25 minutes late.  When I arrived at the bus station I was immediately asked what bus I was travelling on and informed of the delay, this is something as a fully able bodied person I have never experienced.  The conductors at the bus station proceeded to get me a seat, offered to go get me anything I required for my journey from the shop and kept me informed as to how long the bus would be.  When it did arrive I was seated first and offered help to board.  While I was sitting on the bus I felt happy at the customer service I had received then I stopped and thought about it.  My positive experience was due to the crutches not that I was a valued customer as no one else got looked after in the same way and in all the times I have travelled on this service I have never been so well looked after.

The same happened with every shop I went into people stopped to assist me in looking for purchases, yet as an able bodied person I had no offers of such service except from a select few stores.

Please don’t get me wrong I am not complaining at how well people treated me, I enjoyed feeling valued but, are we not all entitled to that high level of service regardless of if we can walk or not?  If we went that extra mile for every customer then all customers would feel valued and would return.

Rewarding staff for going that extra mile will make them too feel valued, there are many ways of evaluating them positively, staff surveys, training, appraisals, customer feedback and mystery shopping, these tools can all bring positivity to the work place if used and implemented in the correct way.