I enjoy the fruits of travel, but hate the process of it. The process numbs me at best, and gets me surly at worst. The family knows that, so I applaud their bravery in getting me to take then to the Angkor Wat in Cambodia and the Tiger Temple in Thailand for a holiday. I’ve traveled with the same agent for a while now and threatened surly consequences if things didn’t go as per plan. So I know they did their due diligence and chose the vendors with care before I embarked on my offshore journey.
I was shocked at the contrast.
We reached Cambodia, a smaller country, a poorer country, a country with a more tragic history, and a pleasure to be in. As we reached the airport and met the guide, we asked what the plan for the stay was, and he knew every detail until we were to leave. We were taken to the hotel where the hand-off was perfect, because the guide had called up as we were landing to coordinate the entire value chain. We asked for flexibility in changing the program and it was easy because the person knew who was involved in the change and coordinated it to perfection. We decided to switch the first day’s agenda to the second day and with a smile everyone involved agreed with our right as a customer to change our mind. Behind the scenes there was coordination between the guides, the transport, the restaurants and the hotel to accommodate the changes and it was impeccable because everyone seemed to know how to pick us up and from whom and where to leave us next, and with whom. When we changed one part of the schedule the rest of the chain adapted seamlessly because it was connected. We didn’t have to pay extra for the most, but when we did, it was done cheerfully because we recognized that we were going to be in safe hands throughout. We were paying to change the process to where we wanted it to be, not for tweaking one of its components. We saw and spent more than we’d planned but it was on our schedule and it was all good. I will go back.
Then we left for Thailand, and the surly expression that comes on me at most airports stayed through the trip. The lady at the airport had no idea when the car would arrive. She’d met her SLA by meeting us outside immigration and had no visibility to the next stage of our travel. When we got into the car after a wait, he drove us to the hotel where he handed us over to the front desk, where we were told there had been a problem with the reservation. The flight had been delayed, and since we hadn’t shown up as per our reverse SLA the rooms had been given to other guests. Of course the hotel was not to blame, neither was the car, nor the person who picked us up at the airport. They’d all met their SLAs. Of course I could take the whole family back to the airport and ask the airline for recompense since that was where the process seemed to have been broken. Never mind I was not going to take two 70 year old ladies across town to argue with a nameless airline official. Of course I paid extra for the upgraded room that was available in their “sister” hotel, but it was not a cheerful payment.
The next morning we waited for guide who called up very angry that we had delayed his schedule. I am, at the best of times, not patient. I’d been at the hotel lobby from 6:30 a.m. waiting and this was 7:15 a.m. We exchanged rude unpleasantries until we realized that no one had thought to coordinate the involuntary location shift. Given that we’d messed with the “vendor's” all important SLA we were left to our own devices while the tour went on its own way. We took our own transport and tried to catch up with what was turning out to be a process that had nothing to do with customer satisfaction. Points racked up, we were welcome to collect our penalties at the end of the month from the travel agent back home. It was a visit to a richer country, a country known for its tourism industry, but a visit without soul. I will not return.
I came back in time to write a blog. I hadn’t thought about work over the past week. And then it hit me. Process adjacency wasn’t about banking processes; it was about results that were relevant, change that was inherent, customers that were happy and value that was a fair exchange. The lack of it was a nightmare.
