I often speak of the power of thank you…and how unexpected thank yous can mean so much. I received this email today and I was so delighted to have made a difference. I challenge you to thank three people today … people who usually don’t get noticed. The dry cleaner perhaps, what about the bus driver who got you to your destination safely and on time..? It just takes noticing. We as customers can really impact the level of enjoyment someone has in doing their job. Here’s the email:

• Hi Naomi, I heard you speak recently at Air New Zealand’s leadership college at Auckland. I must confess to having never heard of you or your organisation before this. I found you a delight to listen to and lots of what you said made sense to me. I didn’t really see how most of the customer contact stuff would relate to me as I work in line maintenance looking after the servicing and repair of aeroplanes before they venture off across the Pacific or Tasman. However, a recent event reminded me of what you said about surprising and delighting the customer. I was onboard NZ2 for Los Angeles with 5-10 minutes to go before departure, completing some last minute stuff (refuelling, paperwork, etc) when a flight attendant asked me to check a reading light in the premium economy section. The light needed relamping so I got a spare lamp from the flight deck and replaced the failed one. After I had done this I noticed the passenger seemed really happy and he told me that in all his years of travelling he had never known an airline that would actually fix something for a passenger right before departure as I had done. This also reminded me of what you said about thanking people because being thanked in this manner made me feel fantastic for the rest of my shift and probably for a good few days after as well.

Anyway, I was glad to have found about you and your company. My wife Christine is notoriously difficult to buy presents for, so when I went home from the leader’s college I checked out your RedBalloon website and found something that she had only recently mentioned to me that she was interested in. This was advanced driver training. So I purchased the voucher for her straight away and she is booked in for early December. There was a problem with the NZ RedBalloon responding to her emails regarding the arrangements for the driving day but happily, this has been sorted and she is looking forward to it. I hope it all goes well. Anyway thanks again for your speech which was truly inspiring and good luck for the future. I am sure I will be a customer again sometime soon.

Best regards, Shaun Houlahan

It really is my pleasure, Shaun.