Reluctantly, I was a customer service secret shopper today.

An airline had taken a long-ago purchased reservation and, well, let’s just say they’d “redesigned” that reservation to create a mythical journey for which time travel – backwards – would have been the only way to make the first connection.

Specifically, I was to arrive in Salt Lake City mid-afternoon. And my connecting flight to Cincinnati? It was scheduled to leave FIVE HOURS EARLIER.

When I called to see if it were my imagination as I tried to decipher the schedule, thinking surely they couldn’t have wrapped that schedule up as a completed piece of service, as it was (but indeed, they had), the agent took one look at what they’d done and started to laugh.

(It is not a good sign when customer service can’t keep a straight face, a straight voice, and breaks into a great big rolling laugh).

Well, seven people later (by now, I was keeping notes on numbers and names of people, departments, service and customer-focused outcome-orientation or “turfer” and policy wonk (“It’s not our policy…” “Well, I’d have to call customer service to do THAT…” and so on. It became a journey of its own), there was a solution. It was not easily obtained. Customer service in some companies has a high number of people who hide behind policy and use it like a shield, it seems.

And then, there are the true gems (really). When you reach them, keep them. Try to complete your transaction with them, if you can. It makes a huge difference in whether you’re going to get customer SERVICE or customer “service.”

I’ve always taught our children to fully notice – to really pay full attention and to show great respect – for high quality service when they receive it, wherever they receive it.

“YOU just experienced RETAIL EXCELLENCE!” I’ve said to them on more than one occasion with a flourish to suggest, “Pay attention, kids! This is a quality that is rarer than you might expect!”

Our daughter has always focused on providing service excellence in jobs through high school and college as a summer nanny, restaurant hostess and server, and now as she deals with patients and their families at the hospital where she works. Our son is up to bat on learning service excellence when he begins a customer-facing, customer-serving job this summer, as well.

Customer service of any kind is excellent preparation for most future jobs, and one may find – like our daughter has – that she or he misses customer contact when it’s gone.

High quality service deserves great respect, wherever you find it.

And remember this advice: your first sign a customer service call may take a while is when the agent breaks into a great big thundering laugh.