Reflections

The porter knew

24 June 2026

What an unforgettable moment of customer service tells us about the only thing that actually creates it.

She had been staying at a five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur for three or four days — travelling alone, visiting friends. Every day, she would slip out of the hotel and make her way to a small food shack just around the corner. Same order every time: one roti canai, with sambar and chutney. The kind of simple, perfect meal that becomes a ritual when you are somewhere unfamiliar and it feels like home.

On her last day, she came down to the lobby to collect her bags before heading to the airport. The porter was standing at the door. He was holding a takeaway bag. Inside was her exact order.

"Madam," he said, "for your journey home."

That was more than twenty years ago. She has never forgotten it. And if she ever returns to Kuala Lumpur, she already knows where she is staying.

I heard this story recently from a friend.

Clients do not come first

Richard Branson built one of the most recognised service brands in the world — and his answer to that question has always been deliberately counterintuitive.

It sounds like a paradox. But Branson's logic is simple: you cannot train warmth. You cannot mandate genuine care. You can only create the conditions in which people feel valued enough to extend that value to others. "If the person who works at your company is 100% proud of the brand," he has said, "if you give them the tools to do a good job and they are treated well, they're going to be smiling, they're going to be happy — and therefore the customer will have a nice experience."

The reverse is equally true. An employee who is not appreciated, not developed, not trusted — will not smile. And the customer will feel it, even if they cannot name it.

Same person. Two hotels. Two entirely different human beings.

Simon Sinek tells a story that makes this concrete in a way that statistics rarely can. A few months before giving the talk below, he stayed at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas. He bought a coffee from a barista called Noah. Noah was so warm, so engaged, that Sinek left a 100% tip. When he asked Noah why he loved his job, Noah said: throughout the day, managers — not just his manager, any manager — would walk past and ask if there was anything he needed to do his job better.

Then Noah mentioned something remarkable. He also worked at Caesar's Palace.

At Caesar's, managers were looking for mistakes. Noah kept his head down. He got through the day and collected his pay cheque. At the Four Seasons, he felt he could be himself.

Same person. Same skills. Same city. Same industry.
Entirely different human being at work.

Simon Sinek on the Four Seasons vs Caesar's Palace — the full story, 2 minutes.

Sinek's conclusion is worth sitting with: "It's not the people. It's the leadership. If we create the right environment, we will get people like Noah at the Four Seasons. If we create the wrong environment, we will get people like Noah at Caesar's Palace."

It is not an accident. It is a design.

The hotels most associated with exceptional service have not left this to chance. They have made it structural.

The porter in Kuala Lumpur who remembered a guest's order from a food shack around the corner was not following a policy. He was expressing who he had been allowed to become at work. That is what great leadership produces.

The numbers confirm what the stories show

Companies with high employee engagement vs low — Gallup State of the Global Workplace 2024 & Deloitte Human Capital Trends 2024.

The question most organisations are not asking

When a guest has a poor experience — slow service, a disengaged receptionist, a waiter who seems to be somewhere else — the instinctive response is to look at the frontline. Retrain the staff. Tighten the service standards. Add another checklist.

But the story of Noah tells us something different. The question is not "why are our staff not performing?" The question is: "what kind of environment have we built — and what kind of person does it allow our people to be?"

The Marriott CEO put it plainly: "Happy associates lead to happy guests. Our investments in employee development and well-being are not only moral imperatives but also business imperatives."

This is not a soft idea. It is a commercial one. The connection between how leaders treat their people and how those people treat customers is one of the most robustly researched relationships in organisational science. It shows up in profitability, in retention, in customer loyalty — and in twenty-year-old memories of a roti canai and a kind word at a hotel door.

A question worth carrying with you

This summer, as many of us travel and encounter service at its best and worst, I want to leave you with a reframe. When you have a remarkable experience — when someone makes you feel genuinely seen and cared for — resist the urge to simply thank them and move on. Instead, ask yourself: what kind of manager does this person have? What kind of culture made this moment possible?

And if you lead people — in hospitality, in any sector — the more important question is the one you already know: what kind of Noah are you creating?

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