Originally Posted by
Stranger
Another factor at play too. Air travel has turned into a commodity. It's cheap and people want it cheap. so the airlines oblige and the level of service can only drop.
however in their marketing, airlines still do the maximum they can to make it sound fancy. Just look at the hype AC is making around the nightmareliner. Which for god's sake they made into a sardine can.
Cheap, glamorous sardine can, right? So in the end when the glamor has turned into a nightmare and service is what people paid for, they complain, surprise, surprise.
The other day, early May, it snowed in Calgary. Took us over an hour to get deiced. although originally I had 90 minutes to connect, i almost did not make it. So, in the current cost environment, does it make sense for AC to plan for a freak snow in May? Or just don't, take a chance and in the unlikely event that it snows, the line up takes over one hour. What would you do if it were your business?
So in the end, it's a cheap operation but their marketing BS still depicts a glamorous experience. What gives?
I have to disagree with this point as well. It seems logical. Air Fares in real terms have fallen significantly over the past 30 years and so, by extension, one would expect the service levels to drop.
However, as another poster pointed out, this does not account for the fact that other commodified service industries such as low-end restaurants and hotels seem to be able to have sustained their levels of customer service over the same period. And, if we want to look at the most commodified of all service sectors: Fast Food, there are major firms like McDonald's which are viewed as case studies of good customer service. I think there even is a story from Isadore Sharps' (founder of Four Seasons hotels) biography that he sat in on a day of McDonald's training because he was so impressed at how consistently pleasant his experiences were there.
Further, this also does not address the fact that there are vastly differing levels of customer service within the airline industry. Despite every airline experiencing the same fall in real fares, there are some airlines which are able to offer a more consistent and polite service than others - or at least a service which is rated higher in quantified surveys. At the bottom end is Ryanair and Spirit, and at the top is SQ et al. One could say that the discount airlines, which have been driving the commodification of the industry, tend to have worse service, but this would not account for the fact that airlines such as Southwest and Jetblue consistently rate very highly in service and higher than their legacy carrier counterparts.
What resonated with me on the youtube video was the dismissive and off-hand comments from the staff members. It generally does not happen to me (I'm a reasonably seasoned traveller so tend not to need any extra assistance and know where I'm going), but I've seen it happen to other passengers. Even if they're doing 95% of their job right, one badly worded comment can really ruin a customer's day. And it is especially infuriating because it is just unnecessary.
Does Air Canada have a particular problem with rude staffmembers? Relative to other major North American carriers I would say generally it is no better or worse... On the aforementioned range of Ryanair/Spirit on one end and SQ on the other, I'd place AC somewhere in the middle.
Not to take things too off-topic, but it seems clear by the relative number of likes to dislikes on the youtube video in question that AC does have a major customer service image problem. Has anyone looked at the CO case study in how it turned itself around, going from being among the worst perceived major airlines to the best?