The Northwest Airlines website would not let me complete the payment process for a flight I was booking. Frustrated, I picked up the phone to complete the transaction. Northwest added to the frustration by informing me there would be an additional $20 fee for the privilege of talking to a person.

This wasn’t my first poor customer service experience from Northwest or Delta or whatever it may evolve into next year. Cutbacks in services, staff reductions and just boneheaded management styles have left us awash in miserable to non -existent customer service.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for the customer service team – hard workers who historically are one of the lowest paid. An article in the Boston Globe reminded me that some CEO’s get it.

Take Paul Levy for example. He is the guy who runs Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The moment had come when pink slips were inevitable. So he took time out and just watched some of the 8,000 people who work for Beth Israel.

As Kevin Cullen, a Globe Columnist noted, “He stood at the nurses’ stations, watching the transporters, the people who push the patients around in wheelchairs. He saw them talk to the patients, put them at ease, make them laugh. He saw that the people who push the wheelchairs were practicing medicine.

He noticed the same when he poked his head into the rooms and watched as the people who deliver the food and empty the trashcans chatted up the patients and their families.”

Paul Levy did something incredible. He did something right for his employees. He did something great for his hospital and the bottom line. Levy stood in front of an auditorium filled with anxious employees and said, “I want to run an idea by you that I think is important, and I’d like to get your reaction to it,” Levy began. “I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them.

“Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when the auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause.

The consensus was that the workers don’t want anyone to get laid off and are willing to give up pay and benefits to make sure no one does. A nurse said her floor voted unanimously to forgo a 3 percent raise. A guy in finance who got laid off from his last job at a hospital in Rhode Island suggested working one less day a week. Another nurse said she was willing to give up some vacation and sick time. A respiratory therapist suggested eliminating bonuses.

Levy did the right thing to help people in hard times. He also did the right thing in delivering great customer service. It is very often the front line that makes the biggest impression on customers. They are the ones who hear the problems first hand. And when given the tools and training they can be the ones to prevent a problem from becoming a lost customer.

Cullen writes this about Paul Levy, “he is trying something revolutionary, radical, maybe even impossible: He is trying to convince the people who work for him that the E in CEO can sometimes stand for empathy.”