Tag Archives for customer service.
Two quick stories about customer focus help me put in context a conversation that’s been happening on LinkedIn among airline executives.
I recently wrote about a man ejected from an American Airlines flight to Miami after throwing up in the coach lavatory prior to departure. He threw up again – on a passenger in first class – as staff guided him off the aircraft.
Fortunately the first class passenger had a change of clothes in the cabin with him. Since American employees literally guided the man, leading to the mess, he wrote in to customer service about the experience. After all, this wasn’t part of the bundle of experiences purchased with a first class ticket.
Travel has been picking up, and airlines haven’t always scaled their call center capacity to match. Add in some bad weather – take Denver, for instance, on Monday where there was snow and more delays than any other airport in the world – and wait times to speak to an airline agent really grow. This has been an issue across airlines, and even wait times for elite frequent flyers who get call center priorities have been longer than usual at times lately.
American Airlines customers, especially, reported long wait times on Monday and into Tuesday – 5 to 8 hours, even – and customers are bringing receipts.
An American Airlines Executive Platinum elite member reached out to the airline’s twitter team for help with a reservation – and the twitter team wound up kicking their companion off the flight. There are lessons here.
If you’re reasonable, nice, and persistent – in other words, if you’re easy to help and easier to help than not help – you’re going to do well complaining in almost any circumstance whether it’s the cable company, an airline, or the DMV.
A bureaucrat may go out of their way because they sympathize with you or at least because you’re nice, nicer than most of the people they deal with. A hotel may offer you compensation because they genuinely feel they’ve shortchanged you in some way, or because it’s cheap to make you feel better about your experience. An airline’s rules are so complex you might get what you want just by finding someone who doesn’t search the rulebook for a reason not to give it to you (call center roulette).
My gut feeling is that there’s something wrong with complaining when others are suffering so much, though people are suffering all around the world during ‘normal times’ and I don’t have an issue talking about ‘first world problems’. Does this shift during COVID times make me, on some level, a hypocrite?
How are you handling customer service complaints now, and is that different than it was at the start of the year? And if there’s a change, will it last past the coronavirus pandemic?
You’d think that an airline like Delta has so many customers, how can a single interaction with one of them matter for the bottom line?
But you have to remember that Delta has over 80,000 employees. Not every one of them interfaces with customers, although most things that nearly every one of them does has an effect on customers. And employees are in contact throughout their days, each and every hour they’re at work, in some cases as many as 250 days a year.
The issue was caused by a gate agent error and, it seems, poor employee communication and customer service coupled with a misunderstanding. But it’s the customer who suffered – but only emotional suffering and inconvenience, no beatings, and that’s progress.
Between the poor operational performance American Airlines has suffered this summer, the airline’s cramming more seats into coach and surly service, the carrier’s employees have a frequent need to apologize to customers.
Twitter used to be the “go-to” way of getting personalized customer service, and with some brands it still is. Many companies assign super competent agents to deal with twitter, and empower them to cut through bureaucracy to solve problems.
Not all do however. And some just follow the ‘first rule of social media’ which is to try to get customers to stop blasting the company as quickly as possible. The easiest way to do that is to get the customer to ‘take it to DM’.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
