The trip was going well.

Made it to the airport early.

Got some food. Some coffee.

Fight was smooth enough. More importantly, so was the landing.

I didn’t have to rush. I was just getting a rental car for a couple-hour drive.

My meeting wasn’t until the morning. Given my occasional tardiness, this trip was a win.

I was thinking just that on the shuttle to the rental car hub when I went to get my ID.

wait

crap

WHERE’S MY PURSE?!?

I never leave my purse. It’s small but carries everything I need. And a handful of things I don’t (looking at you cute, gold paperclips).

Then it dawns on me - I’d tucked it under the seat in front of me, and I didn’t retrieve it when we got off. I’d just gotten my backpack. Sadly my backpack does not contain key things like ID, credit cards, cash. (Though I’m sure it has a couple of those paperclips.)

I’m now on a 20-30 minute loop of the airport knowing full well these planes are turned quickly, and there’s not typically a deep sweep until the end of the day. I’ve not received a call, so it’s doubtful it had been found yet.

panic

Then I remember Delta has a way to text customer service. Probably easier than trying to cut through a call queue. Or so I thought.

After 6 attempts to cut through the AI bot who wants me to fill out a form so my “lost item” can be found in (maybe) 5-7 days, I finally request a human enough times to win.*

Here is where I’m imagining a system where one does not exist…

The text agent can’t help me. I just want a way to contact the baggage office or the gate or anyone in the airport. The final response to my pleas, “… we don’t handle lost and found”.

The system I was expecting didn’t need to have end-to-end care. I wasn’t asking to stop a plane. I wasn’t asking to speak with the CEO. I just wanted them to save me a few minutes of time which could have made the difference between hanging out at the airport for 5-7 days or carrying on with my trip, just a little delayed.

So what happened?

I made it back, ran to the baggage office, found an incredibly speedy and helpful agent who caught the flight as it was being newly boarded. Purse found with just a few minutes to spare.

All is well that ends well, right?

Maybe, but as you are building a customer base, ensure your team never thinks “that’s not my job”. Also, ensure your AI agents aren’t trying to think “everything is my job”.

*pro tip - as soon as someone chatting with an AI agent of any sort asks for human, representative, or anything similar - give them a way to do that. Restating it’s an AI agent trying to help is the least helpful thing. Maybe ever.

Tech tool of the week

Last week, we shared more about AI and SEO and how some recent changes should be considered by your marketing teams.

See last week’s edition here.

This week, we want to follow up with that by sharing a prompt you can use with ChatGPT to do some SEO research for your site.

Here is the prompt - ready for you to copy-paste!

Take Me To The Prompt!

How did that work for you? Just reply - we love reading how you all are getting results!

Until next week,

Rebecca and the Advisory 9 team