Sometime ago I was travelling to Delhi from Mumbai. As I had a meeting early on a Monday Morning, I decided to take the evening flight on Sunday even though it conflicted with my Sunday siesta and dinner with family. I was to take a 5.30 pm Kingfisher. Being a disciplined person, I was at the counter one hour before and I was informed that the flight was going to be delayed.
Unlike the normal practice, the airline had not sent any SMS intimation of the delay and I was really upset. I wanted to shout but kept quiet as I had learned to accept such callous behaviour from most of the service providers here.
The girl at the counter (I think her name was Chaitali) asked me to wait for a minute and went off somewhere. Within a minute she came running and told me that she has tied up with Air India and had got me a seat on the flight that was scheduled to leave immediately. She took my bag and ran to the Air India counter, finished the formalities, and helped me board the flight. I could reach Delhi in time to spend some time with my mother before she slept.
Compare this with the experience I had in January on one of my return flight from Delhi on Jet airways. That was the day when there was a terrible fog. We boarded the flight which was already one and a half hour late and had to wait inside the plane for another about three hours. Then they decided to cancel the flight and we were asked to deplane. We asked them what arrangements were made and no crew member could give us any guidance.
We reached the terminal. There was such chaos. No boards, no announcements and a long queue to reach the few operating counters. I waited for an hour and could get no assistance. One of my friends who was travelling on the same flight arranged for a car and a hotel booking with the help of his local office. The next day I got no SMS/ telephone update on what to do and I could not get anybody on the phone either. I decided to land up at the airport in the afternoon and finally managed to get a seat in a flight that took off in the evening at seven. I reached home 24 hours late of which 14 hours were spent in the plane/ airport. (Apparently, the Kingfisher flight that was supposed to take off with the Jet airways flight was also cancelled; but managed to take off late at night on the same day.
In both these cases the disruption of service was outside the control of the airline. But the response of both airlines (at least the officers who handled the situation) was different. Although such disruptions are very rare, in airlines business, these are situation that can be anticipated and planned for.
Jet airways could have made a difference by just being helpful. They could have made arrangement to provide the instruction by the crew in the plane. The announcement could have been as simple as (i) Those who have a place to stay in Delhi may leave their contact number at the counter and go home and if any of them needed help to get a cab they could contact the ground staff at a special counter and (ii) those who had no place to stay in Delhi could contact ground staff to get help for overnight accommodation. They should have just arranged two special counters to handle these at the terminal and there would have been no crowd shouting. The next day, depending on the weather, they could have arranged to call those who left the contact number and update them on when they could travel.
In the first case Kingfisher had enabled a junior officer to take an exceptional decision and had motivated her to take pride in taking such decisions. (I hope it was not just a one-off decision by the ground hostess who felt sympathy for my distress or who was impressed by my handsome face:- )) I believe such empowerment and encouragement (may be incentivising) would go a long way in improving the service delivery.
Very often many service providers do fail miserably in such nuances of customer service. At best their focus is limited to delivering the functionalities that they have charged for and service quality is often seen as a favour being extended. The more the monopoly power of the service provider, the worse is the service quality.
One way all of us can contribute is to demand for service quality and be bold to protest when it is screwed-up.
Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.DONALD PORTER. Courtesy http://www.customerservicepoint.com
Note: I have used two anecdotal experiences that I had to make a point. This does not mean that the experiences I had with Jet and Kingfisher necessarily represent their customer service practices.
Airlines acting that promptly!!! It had to be the handsome face;)
ReplyDeleteKoshy,
ReplyDeleteYou insult the Kingfisher girl by even suggesting that she was 'incentivised' for helping out. Why should everything be related to money and incentives?? The girl just takes her job seriously, and theses days airlines have these kind of arrangements where they exchange customers in case of flight delays(which are a part of life for any airline). It's a win-win for all. I myself was given an alternate seat in an SG flight when my Jet flight was delayed. It never even occurred to me that the girl on the counter was 'incentivised' to provide me with an option! And fro sure, nor was my admin who was coordinating the arrangement incentivised to help me catch the flight. She too was just doing her job, and being efficient at it. It's a shame to think that everyone and everything revolves around money and incentives. I think this thought process itself is convoluted.
If only all of us do efficiently what we are supposed to do, life would become so much simpler and happier! Think about it.