More Airline info

Airline update as of 8-29-09. during my stay in Pittsburg this week, I had a flight scheduled on Continental to return home to Charlotte from Pittsburg through Newark last night. In the late afternoon (before I headed for the airport) I received an automated call on my cell to check continental.com for important changes in my flight. Knowing that is airline speak for "flight cancelled" and also seeing on my WorldMate travel app I use on my Blackberry (a fantastic mobile app for frequent travelers!) that there were thunderstorms in the Newark area, I prepared myself to spend the next 45 minutes with my travel agent trying to find a way to get home that night. So far, all normal for frequent travelers, right? Wrong. Here's where it gets strange and I find myself writing about Continental yet again. 10 minutes after I received the first automated message from Continental Airlines I receive a call from an unrecognized Pittsburg number. Hesitant to answer since I don't know anyone in the 412 area code except the people I was with, I finally picked up. To my surprise it was a very pleasant Continental rep telling me that as I suspected, my flight had been cancelled. She then informed me that she had all ready booked me on another flight with a competing airline that actually flew me non-stop to Charlotte and had me home 2 hours earlier than my original flight. Early enough that I had a chance to spend some time with my son before bed. Amazing and appreciated.

By contrast, a couple of months ago, I had a US Airways flight canceled while I was at the airport in Charlotte. When I inquired about alternate flights etc. They would not answer and instead referred me to a customer service desk at the other end of the terminal where I waited in line for an hour with others in similar plights. By the time I got to the desk they could not help me and really didn't seem all that concerned about leaving me hanging in the airport. With a lot of wrangling by my travel agent, I was able to get a flight out, but no thanks to US Airways (who I have about a bazillion frequent flyer miles with by the way) In fact, I believe that this was a planned cancellation since there were no weather issues and my flight showed "on-time" right up until cancellation even though there was another flight sitting at the gate we were supposed to board on and they had no mechanical issues (at least that they made anyone aware of).

So another compare contrast example. One airline, Continental, makes a personal phone call in plenty of time and fixes the issue before I even knew there was one. The other, US Airways, even though I'm at their terminal (Charlotte is US Airways' main hub), shuffles me (and others) around like cattle and provides no help. The most ironic thing of all is that the Continental people actually put me on a US Airways flight to get home yesterday.

Thanks again Continental.

Kudos to an Airline???

I know, I know, nobody gives kudos to the airlines (late arrivals/canceled flights, lost luggage etc.). However, for my new job, I've had to do a lot of flying recently. I've flown 18 segments with Continental airlines over the last 30 days to multiple airports all over the East Coast. In 18 segments NO FLIGHT was over 15 minutes late (lets face it, the whole world seems to run at least 15 minutes late) and even those that were a little late taking off managed to make up time in the air and arrive in plenty of time for me to catch connecting flights, or get to meetings etc. On top of that, miraculously, my luggage followed me everywhere without incident and I never waited more than 5 minutes at the carousel for it. On one trip into Nashville, the luggage was all ready on the carousel by the time I got to baggage claim! Top that off with flight attendants (except for one old grouch on the way to Cincinnati...) that were personable, helpful and friendly (to everyone, not just me), the experience was very pleasant.

Looking at this from a pure customer service perspective, in an industry where consumers expect to receive poor treatment, perhaps just solid service without being exceptional is good enough? Thank you Continental for providing solid service throughout my flights. Keep it up.

My only complaint, and it really applies to all the airlines, is the totally bogus $15-20 baggage fees that were created to offset the airlines rising fuel costs. Conveniently, those fees never went away. Fuel costs fell back to the floor and those old expensive fuel contracts are long over, but I'm sure the airlines have now built that profit into their long-term balance sheets. Since they have cleverly desensitized us to it, there is zero chance that those fees will ever go away. Pass-through costs to compensate for extraordinary circumstances are one thing, but continuing long after the circumstances have changed are unconscionable! Its surprising to me that other large corporations and travel agencies with contracts haven't put up more of a fuss about that, since businesses do the lion-share of the air travel and that means corporate America is picking up the tab.

The other side of the Customer Service coin

In the previous post I highlighted some of the stumbling blocks retailers face when trying to deliver great customer service, but there are two sides to that coin. There are retailers out there who routinely deliver very good service levels and have been successful at creating a culture in their organizations. There are also those that "go through the motions" using the same mechanics as those that are successful, but without the ingrained culture necessary to change behavior. Let's start at the beginning of the consumer experience, the greeting:

Two examples. Take a look at Subway Sandwiches, those of us who regularly eat there (which I think is everybody) know that they greet everyone who walks in with a "Welcome to Subway". The problem is that they are the length of the store away from you and usually the associate who says it has not made eye contact and has no idea who entered. They could be welcoming an armed robber in a ski mask for all they know. The greeting is nice, but it lacks the ingrained culture to make customers truly feel welcome. However, once your in front of one of their sandwich artists, they routinely do a pretty good job. They listen to your order, rarely ask you to repeat yourself and get you in/out quickly.

In contrast, check out Best Buy one of my favorite retailers (see my tweets on Best Buy @kwdriskel). They have a greeter (admittedly it's also their in-store loss prevention person) who welcomes everyone into the store. They routinely make eye contact, change their greeting slightly for different customers and will offer assistance when asked. You feel welcomed, and the greeting is personalized enough that it rings of sincerity. You will also find that as you navigate from department to department within the store, that the associates responsible for that area ask if you need assistance immediately unless they are assisting someone else. That's a nice touch, but almost annoying if you travel through the whole store as I routinely do, I'll be asked if I need help 20 times. Yikes. Could the associates be a little more observant and notice that I was just asked if I needed help 10 seconds ago? Probably. But they appear to be sincere and in the case of providing quality service in a semi-technical environment, too much is probably better than too little.

You can see, both of these companies got the message that customers like to be greeted when they arrive, one I believe, does it pretty well, while the other lacks the sincerity needed to be truly effective. Consumers aren't stupid they can feel the difference.

Got something to add? Drop me a note.

The Beginning

After being repeatedly frustrated by poor customer service experiences by the vast majority of retailers out there, I decided to write about it so consumers can make more informed decisions before they shell out their hard-earned cash, good companies and locations get the recognition they deserve for bucking a disturbing trend and maybe convince a few poor performers to address their shortcomings.

I'm not a journalist or writer, so for those of you scrutinizing prose and grammar, prepare to be disappointed at my lack of journalistic style (or even at times basic sentence structure). However after spending most of the last 30 years of my career life in some form of retail at varying levels (including now), and a lifetime of consumer spending, I have a broad perspective on customer service that perhaps will allow you to overlook the run-on sentences, misplaced commas and overused ( ).

Here's something that may surprise some of you. I can attest to the fact that virtually EVERY company out there trying to separate you from your $$, professes to having a culture of superior customer service, most of you on the other hand can relate negative experiences with the same companies that profess to exceed your expectations. Why then do so many fall short? Many have countless programs, measurements and processes to positively impact the customer experience. Some provide financial or other tangible rewards to associates for good service or letters from the CEO etc. when they receive accolades from a customer. If you look on their websites you'll find vision and mission statements that usually have a tag-line that relates to the customer experience. Why the then disconnect? I believe there are really only a few primary reasons why companies fail to live up to your expectations.

1. Many companies have competing company policies that make it impossible for store level associates to live up those same commitments on mission statements and web-sites. Many times associates can be subject to disciplinary action or termination if they deviate from them.
   
   
2. Associates that are not suited to face the customer. We've all been out at a store or restaurant and wondered "how on earth did this person decide to get into retail?" They're surly, grouchy and inattentive. Why would they pick this career? You'll often hear them use the magic phrase "it's not company policy" which is retail speak for, "No I don't want to help you". The real question though is how do companies quickly identify and remove them? Many times policies within organizations make it far to difficult to weed them out even when store level management knows they have a problem.
   
   
3. Associates not empowered to make "the right decision". Many times you'll be standing in front of someone who agrees with you as to what the correct course should be, but cannot choose it (see item one as the root cause). since they are not empowered to help the customer, they quickly become disheartened and either leave the company or become an associate as listed in item 2.
   
   
4. General business model problems. Ever been to a store that is full of customers but not enough associates to help them all? I certainly have. I have to wait too long to get answers to a simple request, have to wait in long lines for the priviledge of giving someone my $$ and get frustrated. In this shrinking economy, the largest company expense is typically payroll. This is where all those layoffs you read about (or worse were subject to) impact you directly. Companies shave payroll to save money, customers get upset at the lack of assistance at the store and look elsewhere, companies shave more payroll to save more money and on it goes...
   

There are certainly many more company and store specific issues that I'll address going forward, but that's my generic, very high level take on how we got where we are. Over the coming posts I'll be primarily focusing on my specific experiences and what I feel could be done differently. If you've made it this far down the page, bless you for your patience.

Feel free to comment to posts and share your experiences if you wish. I'd love to hear from you.