How much is the perception of the experience impacted by what the experience is called?
There have been a few recent rants posts about some dreadful experiences with air travel recently. China Gorman made her blogging debut on the HR Capitalist with a tale of woe on a recent flight, and Mike VanDervort at the Human RaceHorses blog documented a unforgettably poor experience trying to make his way home from the SHRM conference.
It is not news that air travel can really suck, and that customers are often subject to rude, inconsiderate, and even downright offensive treatment at times by airline employees, policies, and even fellow customers. To be fair, to me it still is an incredible experience to be able to strap inside a metal tube, blast off 35,000 feet into the sky, travel thousands of miles in a few hours, and arrive safely at your destination. I am not going to try and defend the industry, but it does seem like perhaps we are all a bit spoiled. Sure United broke that guy’s guitar and he made certain that we all knew about it. In fact, United breaking his guitar was probably the luckiest break that band ever had.
But what about the millions of other pieces of checked crap that is moved successfully each day? No one blogs or makes catchy videos called ‘United transported by ridiculously heavy bag of golf clubs safely to Myrtle Beach’.
Maybe the airlines need to take a step to improving their image (and perhaps the customer service they deliver), by taking a page from Amtrak. Book passage on an Amtrak train and you are likely to be traveling on the ‘Coastal Starlight’, the ‘Silver Meteor’, or the ‘Happyland Express’.
Take a redeye flight from Los Angeles to New York and you are liable to be on #AA27’, which quickly can morph in to ‘Steerage to Oblivion’, ‘Six Hours in a Middle Seat in Coach’, culminating in a ‘Sweaty Wait on the Tarmac.’
Perhaps it is just me, but somehow I get the feeling that employees, customers, and everyone else associated with making sure the ‘Coastal Starlight’ makes it successfully, safely, and positively from Seattle to LA are just a bit more motivated and excited that the community that surrounds ‘UA6033’, one flight that travels that same route.
And if I am right, the same logic could be applied inside the organization, to programs that you have to maintain and administer, but don’t necessarily engender excitement and enthusiasm from the HR staff tasked to deliver, and the employees and managers forced to participate. Create a title that resonates and connects.
There have been a few recent rants posts about some dreadful experiences with air travel recently. China Gorman made her blogging debut on the HR Capitalist with a tale of woe on a recent flight, and Mike VanDervort at the Human RaceHorses blog documented a unforgettably poor experience trying to make his way home from the SHRM conference.
It is not news that air travel can really suck, and that customers are often subject to rude, inconsiderate, and even downright offensive treatment at times by airline employees, policies, and even fellow customers. To be fair, to me it still is an incredible experience to be able to strap inside a metal tube, blast off 35,000 feet into the sky, travel thousands of miles in a few hours, and arrive safely at your destination. I am not going to try and defend the industry, but it does seem like perhaps we are all a bit spoiled. Sure United broke that guy’s guitar and he made certain that we all knew about it. In fact, United breaking his guitar was probably the luckiest break that band ever had.
But what about the millions of other pieces of checked crap that is moved successfully each day? No one blogs or makes catchy videos called ‘United transported by ridiculously heavy bag of golf clubs safely to Myrtle Beach’.
Maybe the airlines need to take a step to improving their image (and perhaps the customer service they deliver), by taking a page from Amtrak. Book passage on an Amtrak train and you are likely to be traveling on the ‘Coastal Starlight’, the ‘Silver Meteor’, or the ‘Happyland Express’.
Take a redeye flight from Los Angeles to New York and you are liable to be on #AA27’, which quickly can morph in to ‘Steerage to Oblivion’, ‘Six Hours in a Middle Seat in Coach’, culminating in a ‘Sweaty Wait on the Tarmac.’
Perhaps it is just me, but somehow I get the feeling that employees, customers, and everyone else associated with making sure the ‘Coastal Starlight’ makes it successfully, safely, and positively from Seattle to LA are just a bit more motivated and excited that the community that surrounds ‘UA6033’, one flight that travels that same route.
And if I am right, the same logic could be applied inside the organization, to programs that you have to maintain and administer, but don’t necessarily engender excitement and enthusiasm from the HR staff tasked to deliver, and the employees and managers forced to participate. Create a title that resonates and connects.
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Instead of marching off managers to ‘Mandatory Regulatory Compliance Update Training’, send them to ‘Who’s Next on the Perp Walk - Don’t Let it Be You’.
I think people might get pretty fired up for that class.
I think people might get pretty fired up for that class.
