I lost my passport!

I magine this. You travel to another country to attend a conference, the flight was a breeze, you go through the immigration customs so smoothly like a diplomat, and you do not wait at the luggage belt because you have a carry-on. And before you raise your hand to call a taxi, one was ready for you. You give the driver the name of the hotel, and off you go. You encounter no traffic delays. You arrive at the hotel and you are welcomed like a celebrity.

They present you with a tray that has an orange juice, a lemon with mint juice and sparkling water with ice. You take your first sip of the orange juice, and you feel rejuvenated. What a perfect day you think! But then, the receptionist asks you: “May I have your passport please.” You reach down to your pocket only to find nothing. How would you react? You will panic! What I described above was based on actual events that happened in Dubai, UAE and a friend of mine told me about it.

It happened to his friend who attended the conference with him. His friend told the receptionist: “I lost my passport.” The receptionist retorted with calm and confidence: “Don’t worry. We will find it for you. We will report the incident to the Police Authority. If you wish, you could rest at our café until we sort out the matter for you.” The receptionist talked to the Police, and they told him: “Call us back at 12:00.

The passport should be with us at that time.” When he called back, true to their words, the passport was in their custody. They told him to send the passport owner to the Police Station to pick it up. The whole transaction took just under two hours. You may wonder how that is possible. Dubai has thousands of taxis serving its residents and visitors. Communicating with them all at a timely fashion to locate the passport will prove tedious and cumbersome.

So here is the secret to this, Road Transport Authority mandates that taxi companies install a Global Positioning System (GPS) in all their taxis to monitor various parameters to achieve higher efficiency regarding dispatching and passengers’ safety. The Police tracked down the taxi that dropped my friends to the hotel to communicate with the driver to drop the passport to the designated Police Station.

That was the magic behind this incident! In my customer service book, Chai Karak: A Customer Service Story, I talk about the importance of anticipating customers’ needs. This story is at the heart of this fundamental principle. Forgetting your passport or other belongings while traveling is possible and the authorities thought about it and created a solution for it. There are many ways to anticipate the needs of your customers, one of the simplest ways is: Just ask them!