Plane Tickets & Post It Parties

Airports can be a chaotic place; bustling travelers, voices over the loudspeaker, running to get to your gate on time. Now add to that the fact that your debit card isn’t working, and you’re trying to book a ticket home. This was the scenario for Chris, a Choice Financial customer, who found himself stuck in Peoria, Illinois, trying to get back to Fargo.

So you can imagine how frantic he was when he placed a phone call to his Choice Financial contact, Sherry. It was evening, so the bank was closed, and Sherry was a half hour away. Not to mention it was in the middle of a severe thunderstorm. She knew she needed to call in for help, and she knew who to call.

Back in Langdon, Morgan Zeis was giving a bath to her rambunctious two-year-old son, Grady. It was around 6:40 PM when she got the phone call.

“Hey Morgan,” Sherry said, and explained the situation. “He’s really upset. Do you think you could help him out?”

“No problem,” Morgan said, watching her son splash around in the bath.

Her husband was finishing up at a golf tournament, so Grady would have to come with her on the evening expedition. With a quick towel dry, she stuck him in his car seat, no shoes, and hurried to the bank.

Once there, she got on the phone with Chris right away.

“He was pretty upset at first,” Morgan said. She knew the course of action; take care of an advance from his operating line and raise the limit on his debit card so that he could purchase the ticket.  Unfortunately, the computer was having some trouble and kept kicking her out of the system. Meanwhile, Grady climbed on top of a desk and began ripping Post-It notes.

“My two-year-old is totally insane,” Morgan explained with a shrug.

Nevertheless, with the grace of a mother of a toddler and a seasoned industry professional, Morgan stayed calm.

“I had to do a bit of finagling,” she said. “But I got it figured out.”

She stayed on the phone until she knew Chris had successfully purchased his ticket and could get on his next flight to Fargo.

Chris is a farmer who has been an ag customer at Choice Financial for over 15 years. Morgan knows him to be a man of few words. So when he said, “Thank you for doing this, I really appreciate it,” it meant a lot.

The next morning, Morgan mentioned the situation to her coworker Nicole Koons.

“She talked about it like it was no big deal. But as she told me, I thought, ‘that is a big deal!’” Nicole said. “Coming in after hours, with your two-year-old, while it’s storming, and all with a smile on her face. It’s classic Morgan. She lives out our core values every single day.”

Core values such as “Commit to your customer with undivided attention,” and “Know when to offer help,” are engrained in how Morgan treats her customers, Nicole said.

Morgan just smiled and said, “Sometimes you get unique requests. It’s just a matter of getting the job done.”

Even when your toddler is having the Post-It party of a lifetime.

Our People First values are at the heart of everything we do. Learn more about our passion for putting People First here.