Originally Posted by
DaviddesJ
Yeah, definitely. It's a no-brainer that treating your customers better in unfortunate situations more than pays for itself, in an industry that depends on repeat business and has lots of competition. I think virtually everyone agrees on that.
For the
airline business, is there bottom-line evidence to support that? Are "nicer" companies more profitable than not-so-nice? Do the nicer companies stay in business while the others fail?
A case might be made that the "nicer" companies don't last in this biz. Midwest Express was generally highly-regarded; that's the only recent example that comes to mind. Where are they now? And the legacy carriers consistently rank at the bottom of the surveys, and yet they plunder on (with a few exceptions).
The customer says nice is important, but isn't willing to pay more $$$ for nice. If nice cost the same, would it win out? Certainly. But nice doesn't cost the same. It's easy to believe otherwise, but you have to invest to be nice. You have to hire trainable employees, and train them. You have to be willing to make things right, which costs money.
Ah, but those short-term costs lead to long-term profits, right? In theory, yes. In practice, the consumer sees a flight from SFO-ORD as an 1800 mile trip where price is the #1 determining factor, and the airlines made it that way. How? By a screwy pricing model that encourages us to work around our plans to get a reasonable fare. Price is first and foremost in our minds, because it might cost $600 if we leave on a Sunday afternoon (when we want to) and $300 if we left on a Saturday or Tuesday. Once we're in price mode, of course we compare to other airlines, and the idea of "nice" has kinda gone out the window as a factor because the airlines have already made a mess of your plans.