When I was younger, more young than Charlie Munger… ok ok, I’ll get to the short story:
I have flown with a national airlines back in 1995 from Dubai to Istanbul. Service was hostile and the food was horrible.
Forward to 1997, I was at a hotel in Azerbaijan for some business of someone else. While waiting them having a business meeting at a cafe, I walked to the stores and inspected the showcases one by one. When I came to a Germanic airline company’s ticket office, I saw model airplanes of the same airplane, from smallest to largest, on elevated platforms attached to the wall, each on top of the other. I was looking at those airplanes with awe. Then suddenly a man came out of the office door and walked towards me with a very small box in his hand and handed me with a smile on his face and with a gleam of pride in his eyes. He said nothing and I thanked him for the box, but he still said nothing, just similing and gleam in his eyes and returned back to his office. When I returned back to the people I was accompanying and sat down, I opened the box and there was a small model plane in it!
Even though I haven’t flown anywhere since '95, and never with that Germanic company yet… guess which one I’m choosing next.
Now that is how you win a customer’s heart!