Post without Title

I have been deliberating on a title for this post - “How we spent our time this summer”, “ “Life is not bed of roses”, “Terms and Conditions”, SNPL…nothing satisfies me so I will leave it up to the audience to decide. This summer, my family and I had planned to visit India, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we changed our plans and instead opted to take a cruise to Alaska.

Don't quote me on this, but aside from space travel, an Alaska cruise is one of the most expensive vacations, according to my machine learning model forecast (after running 10 epochs using the data from Kaggle :)). Being part of the financial industry, I made the decision to invest some time in researching the various financial choices provided by fintech, open banking, open finance, open data, and embedded finance tools. The effort was fruitless. Considering the current state of the economy selling my crypto was merely a suicidal attempt. Consequently, I made the decision to choose the Save Now, Pay Later (SNPL) option to fund this trip.

2 weeks were spent making preparations for the cruise. Finally, the day came. We flew to Seattle, slept the night there, and then proceeded directly to the port the next day. The embarkation process began with checking in bags, verification of boarding card and COVID results,?security check, and final identification verification (passport/license/VISA driver's documents) before they let you into the cruise.

?Finally, it was our turn. The support agent checked all the paperwork and told us to wait a short while. He went to verify with higher officials and returned with the bad news that our entry had been denied. There are several analogies I could use to illustrate this situation, but one that immediately comes to mind is when you confess your love to your crush and she hits you with the classic, "I'm sorry, you're like a brother to me." Ouch.

I made an attempt to clarify that I had reserved the tickets in reliance on the clarifications I had received from customer service. He refused to listen and told me to contact customer service again so I could speak with them directly. However, he was adamant that we couldn't travel on that day.

?My mind was racing with thoughts of my wife and kids, disappointment, and frustration. In the meantime, I noticed someone standing around the corner, staring at me with a satisfied expression on his face, I also knew he wanted to talk to me. I said "Yes" when he inquired if our admittance was refused. He told me that his admittance had also been turned down. After ten minutes, two more families arrived, and I was once again feeling content and at ease. Look at our human nature: more people experiencing the same pain or disappointments tend to make us feel better than if we were to go through the same thing alone.

Phone agents were unable to provide the proper support since our situation wasn’t a new booking or upgrade request.?As a result, we were instructed to submit a CASE through the site.

After 30 minutes, it was established that we would not be boarding the ship; as a result, we waited for our luggage to be given back to us.

As a manager and leader, it was time to put into practice everything I've learned from my mentors, motivators, and other leaders. The quote that came to mind is “Life is not about how many times you fall down. It's about how many times you get back up” - Jaime Escalante.

Therefore, I started working on PLAN B (i.e), to compensate for the loss, spend a couple of days in Seattle. I did a quick research on the places to visit/hotels etc. When I was about to execute the PLAN B, a support member informed me that they were unable to trace the luggage and it will be shipped back after disembarkation. I audibly laughed in shock. I had to pinch my wife to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I attempted to process how thousands of dollars had been spent on a flight from Dallas to Seattle just to be denied access to the cruise my children had been looking forward to all summer, and as a cherry on top, we didn't even receive our luggage back.

Next, I made the decision to put on my leadership hat and began formulating PLAN C because PLAN B will not work without our bags. I was given the "Aaniya pudungavenam" (you don't have to do anything!) look by my wife. Please stop showcasing your leadership abilities and help us arrange a flight back to Dallas :(?

The following morning when we arrived back home, my younger child and I woke up with a high fever. Soon, it was discovered that we had COVID-19.

We've had a roller coaster of a couple of weeks, and now we're trying to recover. Yes, it's all a learning experience + couple of takeaways.

• How to Be There for Clients in Difficult Times - I would say, it’s more towards, how to treat your existing and departing customers, the same way we treat new customers.?
• Empower support team members to say “I don’t know” so that they will guide the customers in the right way instead of sharing some info in order to convince them to onboard. Had the customer team asked me to reach out to the right contacts/materials, it could have saved our summer vacation dream, time, effort, and money. Now we left with disappointment. I believe this should come from a TOP-DOWN

?#How to Be There for Clients in Difficult Time

#Tough Times Never Last, but Tough People Do