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Blog > Service sucks
Author: Martin Hayes
It doesn’t matter how you look at it, the client/consumer interface is at the cutting edge of most brand loyalty and thus sale success issues. Do you want to do business with/buy goods or services from an outfit whose service level doesn’t work for you? It’s a really personal issue in many cases and underlines the fact that business is not really about business it’s about people and how they relate to each other.
This has been brought home to me twice in recent weeks, once by the World’s Favourite Airline and once by Curry’s who are responsible for – again – fixing my washing machine.
In the case of British Airways it’s a tale of astonishing customer neglect. The evening plane I was on back to Heathrow from Edinburgh left a little late but managed to catch up time and arrived back at Terminal 5 even a bit early. Great we all thought. Then the chief steward informed us the: ‘the pilot has stopped short of the terminal and the airbridge can’t reach the plane so you will need to exit from the rear and take a bus’. Not great news but not too painful – for most of us. But when we had got on the bus finally, we saw a wheelchair bound passenger being forced to walk down the steps, gripped by two burly stewards even though by this time the airbridge had got to the front door (and so revealing a minor corporate lie).
When I queried why this elderly lady was being put through this undignified and possibly painful experience, the truth was finally told. ‘Ah’, said the bus driver, ‘this plane is going out first thing to Geneva so you are parked at an international gate and you can’t exit from a domestic flight that way’. So for BA’s convenience we were all delayed by half an hour and an elderly and frail passenger in their care goes through an entirely unnecessary trial.
As someone said, you might expect it on Ryanair, but surely not on BA? Well, yes, actually – they really are all the same (and don’t get me going on the banks when it comes to service levels).
As far as the washing machine saga is concerned, it took me a whole day to get through to a call centre, explain that once again – for the third time – my machine was exhibiting the same fault and fix a service call, 10 days off, the best they could offer. A really poor start to my service experience.
However, when the day duly arrived a charming guy came and worked on the errant washer and, its early days yet, seems to have fixed the problem.
So which organisation do I think the best of? I’ve travelled thousands of miles with BA, by and large satisfactorily and I really did think them better than the bucket shop carriers. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve had issues with Curry’s before but one smiling, polite and (hopefully!) efficient service guy has changed my perception.
Is it us who are fickle or them? I think staff training is the ultimate weapon in the quest for client satisfaction, and thus brand loyalty and sales success. The fact is, it can be done right again and again but only if your staff are motivated to go the extra mile, something everyone in management would do well to learn.
7th Nov 11
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