Anoush Shamaei is the Founder & CEO of Emelx, a licensed ground transportation and chauffeur company.
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A family is scheduled to arrive at LAX and be picked up by a ground transportation service in the evening. On paper, it’s a straightforward pickup: The flight time is confirmed, the vehicle is assigned and the destination is set.
Then the variables start changing. The flight arrives early. Baggage takes longer than expected. The passenger’s phone won’t connect after landing in the U.S. Traffic around the terminal is heavier than anticipated.
None of these issues are unusual on their own. Together, they turn a routine pickup into an operational test.
Running a ground transportation business has taught me that confirming the booking is usually the easy part. The real test begins when reality stops following the plan. That lesson applies far beyond transportation. Every service business needs a clear way to respond when the plan changes. Based on my own experiences, here are five steps for providing a service that will stand up to the unexpected.
1. Identify exceptions before they become emergencies.
Most service operations are built around what is supposed to happen. Fewer businesses plan for what happens when the normal process changes. Every service industry has its own version: A hotel guest arrives before a room is ready or a contractor’s materials are delayed.
Start by identifying the situations that most often disrupt your workflow. For each one, define five elements:
• Trigger: What event signals the disruption?
• Owner: Who takes immediate responsibility?
• Response: What action should follow?
• Communication: What does the customer need to know?
• Escalation: When should management step in?
Planning those answers in advance can turn a disruption into a manageable exception.
2. Build processes people can use under pressure.
Nobody wants to search through a 40-page operations manual while a customer is waiting. In a time-sensitive situation, people need one simple answer: “What do I do now?”
In my experience, the best procedures make the next step obvious. In airport transportation, a delay affects more than arrival time. It can change chauffeur scheduling, vehicle staging near the terminal, passenger communication and the timing of the next trip. When client details change, confirm the new information before your team acts. When capacity becomes constrained, escalate early enough to preserve options.
A useful process should identify the trigger, the person responsible and the expected outcome. If your employees cannot follow a process under pressure, simplify it.
3. Give frontline employees clear decision boundaries.
Operations slow down when every small exception has to reach the owner or senior manager. The founder becomes a bottleneck, employees wait for approval and customers wait for service. To solve this, ensure that anyone on the front line can answer three questions:
• “What can I resolve on my own?”
• “What requires approval?”
• “What must be escalated immediately?”
Frontline employees should generally be able to resolve issues that are low-risk, reversible and consistent with the company’s service standards. In transportation, that might mean a chauffeur handling a minor timing adjustment for a traveler delayed at baggage claim. Decisions involving safety, legal exposure, significant financial consequences or a meaningful change to the company’s service promise, however, should be escalated immediately. The goal is not unlimited authority; it is clear authority.
4. Communicate before the customer has to ask.
Another lesson I’ve learned is that many service problems become worse because of uncertainty rather than because of the problem itself. At an airport, a traveler may wonder whether the car is there, whether the company noticed a flight change and where to meet the driver. Silence can feel like bad news even when everything is under control.
Proactive communication helps remove that uncertainty. Confirm important details before service begins, send an update when circumstances change and provide instructions before the customer needs them. This especially matters with international travelers. If a passenger’s phone will not connect after landing, the information sent before departure may be the only guidance they receive.
A simple operating principle has worked well for me: Do not make customers chase the company for information the company already knows they need.
5. Turn every exception into operating data.
Once a difficult situation is resolved, the easiest thing to do is move on. Resist that instinct.
After a meaningful disruption, ask what happened, whether it was predictable, whether the process worked and what should change. Track the type of disruption and its frequency, time to resolution, customer impact and root cause. One delayed flight may mean little, but repeated problems on the same route or at the same time of day are different.
Patterns can be planned for. Identifying those patterns can lead to better scheduling, stronger training, clearer customer communication and more effective operating procedures.
Resilience is a design choice.
Disruptions are unavoidable in service businesses. Operational resilience means building a company that already knows how to respond when conditions shift.
That matters even more as a business grows. If every unusual situation depends on the founder finding a solution, scaling becomes difficult. I’ve found that when employees understand the triggers and their decision-making authority, communication requirements and escalation points, the business becomes less dependent on improvisation.
When this is done well, customers will likely never know how much changed behind the scenes. They simply remember that your business delivered when the plan changed.
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