Millions of passengers do travel without any incidents with their bookings made via many travel agents, online booking sites and on airlines own websites. But when something goes wrong, airlines find it tough to recover from that. A good service capability will make such recoveries for both the passengers and airlines bearable.
This is a blog on another travel related incident worth a discussion on service improvements. The incident is true and verifiable even though the identity of the passenger and the airlines are concealed here.
A shocker at the departure airport:
- After standing in the check-in queue for about three hours, the passengers got an alert that there might be slight delay to take-off due a technical fault that not clearing a message on the console.
- After sitting on tarmac for about four hours, passengers did not know that they will be in a rude shock when they were told to deplane, still promising that the flight will take off within an hour or two.
- Passengers were told that plane cannot take off and airlines will rebook them on later flights by contacting them individually. By the time passengers collected their bags and then the vouchers to either get back home or stay at a hotel , they had spent 10+ hours without a decent food or drink.
- In one passenger case, the travel agent had to make the bookings as no one from the Airline called at the promised time.
What is wrong with this service and how could it be made different”
- Captain had made the courageous call of not putting the passengers in danger while the message remained on the console. However, a continuous update on an hourly basis could have helped to ease the anxiety levels of most passengers. By providing a service where a constant supply of drinks/snacks was available to the passengers would have calmed the nerves.
- When passengers are waiting to collect the bags and the vouchers, a simple reassurance to help passengers to feel that they are looked after with this sudden turn of events would have scored high. Not calling passengers at their scheduled time of calling, checking on passengers who had taken their agent’s help, and, a separate check-in not to make them wait again in the check-in queue for hours are simple adjustments in service without losing an arm or a leg.
- Giving an avenue to vent their frustrations through a feedback form would have given a lot of confidence to passengers that airline means business and will not compromise on customer service.
It is true that technical faults and other types of faults discovered before take-off are unexpected and will take airlines off guard. The above are very simple changes if the airline had seen it from the passenger ‘s viewpoint and seen it as true to resort to sorting things from their end first.
These changes do prescribe a common sense approach with a customer-centric view of operating a service industry. It is apparent that in a service industry, the main measuring stick is the capability to serve customers under unusual circumstances. QTIME servicing is an answer as Trust and Innovative mindset drive the methods adopted and the efficiency of the efforts.