So I just returned from vacation this past Sunday. My family had a great trip to Destin, FL. I’d like to share with you one of my experiences during this trip in hopes that it might help you think a little more clearly about your customer’s and client’s experience with your company.

I’ll start out by letting you know that I am currently reading a book called The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. I’ve just started reading it, but suffice it to say that if you plan to be alive 10 years from now, it’s a must read. The premise of the book is actually very simple. The World is Flat because of the rapidly growing ability for everyone in the world to be connected via the Internet. This leads me to my brief story.

Part of our vacation package for this trip was a plethora of amenities such as a free round of golf everyday, some boating/fishing trips, a Dolphin Cruise, and many other activities. These amenities were “free” for the most part but some were available to us at a discounted rate. The amenities that we utilized were in and of themselves excellent experiences. However, the process for claiming these amenities was at the very least, painstaking.

The process went something like this…

Telephone the organization that administrates the amenities. The person who answers, (all of them were extremely nice and polite by the way), asks for some information in order to verify the legitimacy of your desire to claim your amenities. Next, its on to which amenities you’d like to schedule. During my first call I wanted to schedule a golf tee-time, a fishing trip, and a dolphin cruise. Sounds easy enough right? It only took 30 minutes. Yes, 30 as in thirty. The reason it took so long is that the person who answers the phone and arranges your amenities for you has to put you on hold to call each of the merchants providing the amenities.

While this didn’t ruin my vacation, it did cost me at least 25 valuable minutes, (30 minutes minus the 5 minutes that such a call should have taken) almost every time I wanted to schedule something. As connected, and flat, as the world is today, folks should at least have the option to handle this type of process themselves via the internet, thus making it faster for the guest and cheaper for the amenities organization. And, if not the ability to DIY via the internet, the people on the other end of the phone should at least have the ability to schedule these amenities electronically.

The moral of the story is this, think about everything from the user’s or consumer’s perspective. This particular process could cost a vacationer hours of their hard earned, much needed vacation. An experience like this devalues the whole vacation package.

There is a silver lining to this story…DDS has found a new prospect. It’ll be tough to spend all that time at the beach…working. But hey, somebody’s got to do it because I don’t want to have to go through that again.