How May I Help You?

Martin Charlwood

President and CEO
Uniglobe.com
Seattle, Washington

Say that you're at O'Hare International Airport, and your flight gets canceled. Like everyone else booked on that flight, you go to the airline's customer-service counter. There are 150 people in front of you, and they're all freaking out. But if you're one of our customers, you simply walk over to the nearest phone and call the 800-number for our 7/24 Rescue Line. An agent brings up your file and says, "Oh, there's a flight on another airline. It leaves from Terminal 3 in 45 minutes. Why don't you run over and catch it?"

The agent automatically prepares your new electronic ticket and lets your hotel know that you may arrive later than was expected. And if you still miss your connection and get stuck in the wrong city, the agent will make sure that your car reservation is held until the following day. That's what it means to deliver great service. It's not in everyday situations that great customer service matters most -- it's when there's a crisis. And in the travel business, crisis situations are often the norm.

I know, because I'm a key user of the 7/24 Rescue Line. I travel 250 days a year, on three continents, and I can't tell you the number of times that I've been somewhere like Tokyo and I've had to change my flight when it was 3 AM back in the United States. Whenever that happens, I just call that 800-number and someone answers, "Uniglobe travel services. May I help you?" That's an incredibly comforting thing to hear.

Martin Charlwood (mcharlwood@uniglobe.com) launched Uniglobe.com in 1997, along with his brother, Chris Charlwood, and his father, U. Gary Charlwood. (U. Gary Charlwood founded Uniglobe Travel Inc., a franchise company, in the early 1980s.) Uniglobe.com, an online travel agency, has partnered with cruise lines to offer information and bookings, and it features a live-chat service from 6 AM to 7 PM. The company follows a policy of responding within 20 minutes to every customer email.

Tony Fujita

Vice President of Parts, Service, Customer Satisfaction, and Training -- Lexus Division
Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc.
Torrance, California

Today's customers are impatient and demanding. They have high expectations and very little time. So when you're trying to serve them, speed is critical. That means that you need to shorten the distance between the people who create products and the people who buy those products.

That's a challenge when your manufacturers are in Japan, as ours are, and your customers are mostly in the United States. The Pacific Ocean is pretty wide -- not only in terms of miles but also in terms of cultural distance. So, to get feedback about customer needs, we started the Lexus Owners' Advisory Forum in 1998. We bring about 20 engineers who are responsible for designing and producing the Lexus to the United States, and they meet with 15 or 20 loyal Lexus owners. Together, they walk around the cars, and the customers tell the engineers what they like and what they dislike.

We're always trying to think of new ways to serve customers better. For example, because we have fewer than 200 dealers in the United States, many of our customers must drive hundreds of miles to buy a Lexus. And when they need routine service, or when they want to install an accessory, they don't want to drive all the way back to the original dealer. So we've begun a new service: We've converted a truck into a mobile service station that we can roll into a customer's driveway.

These are ways to speed up service -- to shorten the gap between your customers and your company. In the new marketplace -- the marketplace of impatient buyers -- companies that can't offer fast service will be left behind.

Tony Fujita has been with Toyota since 1972, serving in roles that include national sales manager and vice president of sales support. The number of customers for Lexus luxury cars and sport-utility vehicles has grown from 500,000 in 1996 to more than 1 million today. Lexus dealers have earned highest honors in customer satisfaction from J.D. Power and Associates for eight of the past nine years.