CeruleanBlue

I fly Norra to BMA and back weekly, and a mix of other AY short-haul destinations. Nobody says anything special, I just get the drink without having to pay and a newspaper offered. But I notice a much more personal and sunnier greeting and service compared to people in neighboring seats. That's fine and dandy for me.

niksal

I also fly mostly HEL-OSL-HEL. I get to try BMA-HEL tomorrow, let's see if that's different.

Could OSL be a route where they more easily use spare crews? On yesterday's flight AY660 the chief of cabin only had one stripe on the sleeve. She seemed senior, though. But she was quite lost when it came to the service. Maybe she doesn't fly that much and wasn't used to the new concepts? Definitely no "sunnier greeting" and no newspaper offered.

As has been said also in other threads, all it takes is a "welcome back, can I offer you a newspaper or a drink"? Even we Finns should be able to do that, instead of the "what, you have a card and want something?"

FFlash

Last Norra fligth

I will have just water.

Lady asks me, bit awkward manner: you have the platinum card? You can have some drink if you want.

I say, just water please.

Other pax looking at me. Me feeling very "finnish", you know what I mean

OH-LGG

Same when I order mustikkamehu. Then it's "uh....uh...and thats all?"

intuition

Platinum card - for our frequent drinkers!



Well, this is the thing I've ranted about. If you don't guide your staff, they will fumble in the dark.

Scenario 1: Memo sent to staff "The Finnair plus program have been renewed. As of now, all platinum members can get a drink and a newspaper free of charge onboard our flights."

The result: Typical FA-customer interaction will be "You have platinum, you can have a drink" and "No you can only have one drink free of charge"


All the staff knows is "platinum equals a free drink" so that is how they communicate. If you instead provide the background, the goal and how staff is supposed to reach it, you'll get better results.



Scenario 2: Memo sent to staff "We now start a recognition program. With it, we aim to make our most frequent travellers feel that we appreciate their business. This is done by several small actions on our part. First we great all platinum members by name. ... <outline of routine>

Many travellers appreciate a personal touch, so we encourage you to develop your own style of communication. Here are some examples to get you going: "Welcome back, Mr/Mrs/Ms ...! Can I get you a drink and a newspaper?
...



It can't be much to ask for HQ to actually make sure all the new great ideas are implemented onboard in a way that actually gets the result they want!

FFlash

Haha, intuition, the "Finnish" style is to only send a memo and think that world will be perfect and everybody follows a "supposedly clear instructions" in the said memo without any chance of communication perceived in an individually different manner

Well, then there are some of the bright FA's who know how to act, discard the memo details and take free liberty of excercising own style which my last flight male FA did and he was just great, with a smile! kudos to him.

FFlash

I must look very leisury businessman since all last 20 so flights they bring me automatically Iltasanomat without asking, even if I dont care. Would prefer Kauppalehti or maybe Helsinge Pravda

heatsink

In my experience, it's either that or a huge braindump that's ten times too long for what it's trying to say. Half a year from now no one will know which parts of it are outdated and which aren't. Instead, a second document will show up on the intranet. It will appear to discuss something unrelated, but often overlap. Some overlapping parts will conflict and some will not. Only the people who wrote the documents will be able to tell which one is authoritative. Not even they know about the third document, however.

The writing style is also unbearable, of course. One sentence will start with "The platinum drink perk is..." and the next one will start with "The platinum drink perk has...". Readers will be forced to wonder whether the authors have ever heard of the word "it".

Regardless, the authors will still feel like they did a good job, because they've documented everything and that's the job they were given.

The staff relies mostly on tidbits of knowledge from random colleagues.

niksal

HEL-ARN, newspapers handed out (both IS and HS) with a smile before takeoff. That's the way it should be! BMA-HEL, no papers but drink given without any hassle.

lkrt

Norra-operated WAW flight today: no newspapers and the drink perk was again executed in an odd way as everyone on my row were asked if they had a Plat card – I really must not look like a typical Plat...

cistavoda

Typical plat is older...

lkrt

Surely so!

harri

Flew to GDN yesterday with Norra's ATR. Started chatting a bit with the FA and she said that in their manifest Norra only sees that there are Emerals onboard but they don't know where they are sitting (is this the case for AY Plats too?) - she was "blaming" AY for this . She was very apologetic for the fact that they can't be proactive when serving drinks because of this. Is this really true

SPBanker

I don't know about OWEs, but in July (HEL-GDN) they knew exactly where I and one other AY Plat were sitting.

harri

AY should do what AA does - they mark all OWE's as AA Ex Plats. To avoid all confusion etc I guess ^