FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Lumo recognition, freebies and soft perks
Old Jun 9, 2018, 5:10 am
  #116  
intuition
Moderator, Finnair
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: MMX (CPH)
Programs: Eurobonus Diamond, QR Gold, AY+ Platinum, A3*G, Nordic Choice Lifetime Platinum, SJ Prio Black
Posts: 14,174
First of all, i completely agree with you. I've tried to provide feedback and expected a continous improvement over the years (soon my tenth year as platinum), but my cynical conclusion is that it is pointless.

First problem is that the comapny isn't set up for cross department cooperation. And CS is likely the least "cool" part of the company and has nothing on the rest. IMO, it is exactly like you say it shouldn't be - they are there to try to make pissed off customer slightly less pissed off. By the end of the day, no one thanks them for their work and no one cares about the result or takes any actions.

Secondly, Finnair is a numbers company. One pissed off tier member is still just one, and regardless of how unhappy he/she is, one pax does not even show up in any metric.
I've heard this in several discussions with staff, and I really understood it when I fought with them about the 9h delays of AY69. I couldn't understand why they cared so little about delaying 250 pax 9 hours, until I learned that is wasn't a one-off but a SOP. Operations did this on a regular basis, around twice a month, to handle any fault in the fleet. And it had been going on for years. The more people I spoke to the more I understand that nobody really cared about the passengers or the bad reputaion for the route, as long as the delays wasn't impacting the over-all delay number. As long as they stayed above 92% flights arrival on time (or what ever the target was), there wasn't any reason to take actions. Even one HKG flight a week delayed 9h did not show up in any metric.

This numbers game keeps repeating in other areas as well, and may very well come from AY hiring policy. They require masters degree or higher for almost all positions, so they tend to end up with staff that are very well educated on the theoretical side but without much experience.

We also know that staff does not fly. Even higher position staff fly very rarely, and when they do, they always fly on AY in business. 99% of the company staff knows very little about the product in IRL and very little about the needs and expectations of their customers. They know nothing about the competition.
Their only tool is surveys - which usually is directed to op-up passengers - and again it is a numbers game. If 90% is joyful, then no need for action.

So while I do hope you'll get another result than I get. These days I don't even give them any feedback at all, only when they tries to screw me over. And they also stopped playing the game - they don't compensate me, they just issue the boilerplate excuse and that's it. And I have accepted that and decided not to waste time and energy on a company that does not want to improve.

Last edited by intuition; Jun 9, 2018 at 5:17 am
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