I did customer service for four years (which is a lifetime in customer service) and think that this is an extraordinary explanation of how customer service could and should work.

Mike

I was looking at airline jobs last night. One airline was looking for multilingual customer service agents. Pay - $7.35 an hour.

Given the choice of working in the fields harvesting tomatoes, and doing customer service for the same pay... Which would you chose?

Customer service is not a highly skilled job, I dare to say.

JP

Do you honestly think that a gate agent should make the same as the fry cook at the McDonalds in the same terminal?

You'd stink working the deep fryer but you don't have to have hundreds of travelers angry at you for problems you didn't cause and aren't empowered to fix every week.

yup, you are right about that!
Why do they all also say things like, "Oh my computer is slow. Hold on please, sir." Well, it's because they (A) don't know sh*T and (B) can't do much about it anyway!

it bugs me to (A) do business with such places, although we often have to, and (B) to know that the person working there is somehow brainwashed into thinking that's all he or she can get for a job!

Of course the flying public doesn't "think" that. However, they do feel they should be able to fly transatlantic for $600, complete with free movies, free pillows, free blankets, tons of legroom, two free hot meals, 20K air miles and complete flexibility to change their tickets.

Ergo, by extension they think the a gate agent should make peanuts, they just don't extrapolate out that far.

no, I actually think the flight should cost me either $350 in low low season or $600 in high season, but the gate agents should be making $45,000 at the very least! All flight staff should be making more money. All airline employees should be making more money. CSRs should be highly trained not just in policy (where the overseas ones are so vibrantly into repeating back all the freakin CS speak in every single call to you) but in the ways of handling CUSTOMER NEEDS! You know, kinda what they would expect if THEY got the chance to fly without all the corporate restrictions that they have to endure.

Where does this money come from?
Well, make the service more relaiable and it will flow.

and oh, the next time you are going to have a terrorist attack, WARN EVERYONE! GROUND EVERYTHING that week! Lose a few mil that week, save a LOT more later on!

Ahhh... but that is the very problem. It is the attitude that "customer service is not a highly skilled job," that causes so many of the problems. It is the thought by airlines (and others... DMV comes to mind) that interacting with customers is not a very highly skilled job that is exactly the problem.

What is customer service? Well, generally speaking what it "is" with most airlines - and some other companies - is more or less "customer issue automation." It's a process designed to "handle" customer complaints in a manner that is most efficient for the corporation.

What it should be? Serving your customers. That's the "art" of customer service. It's also the definition. It's the idea that 'my job is to make this customer's experience outstanding.' It happens to be a very high skilled job.

Look at the spectacular examples of outstanding customer service:

FedEx: I pay more to ship FedEx than I could with UPS or USPS. Why? Because it always gets there on time. And in the INCREDIBLY rare time that it doesn't - they ALWAYS go way above and beyond to personally handle the situation. Their customer service people spend more time in training than their operations people.

Disney: It's not the most magical place on earth because a bunch of high school students are manning the shop. Disney recruits and trains the best of the best and insists on creating an outstanding experience.

Apple: I pay more for their "applecare" warranty because the service is impeccable. I also shop in their stores because they "get it." Their people are skilled and trained well.

Enterprise: Want to get promoted at Enterprise? It's TOTALLY based on your customer service quality score. Not on how much revenue you produce - but whether or not you are exceeding customer expectations. Sometimes it costs me more to rent from them, but I've never had a bad experience.

Outback Steakhouse: They train their people for an average of 10 days before they ever wait a table on their own. You pay a little more for a steak, but again, the service is always outstanding.

There are companies that get that serving customers, and providing outstanding service is not only the "right" way to run a business - it's also the profitable way!

opps... almost forgot to add... with the exception of the pilots at FedEx, not a single "customer service" related person in any of these companies are in a union.

lets say in the beggining, CSRs actually thought for themselves, liked their jobs, took pride in trying to solve things and basically satisfied customers as best they could, given the circumstances and a few rules.

I think over time, people scammed them whenever they could, some complained too much, and more rules got made. Then people got mad if the CSr said "black guy" instead of "African American" and stuff like that. Maybe some people complained that certain issues were handled differently depending on who you knew or something. So more policies and "say this in this way but dont say that in that way" types of things got initiated into the wording. Now it became more about HOW you present than what you present. Now they are trying to sell us on the theory that you get the same, consistent service, by a matter of policy everywhere you call in, but that's just not the case! the india call centers, in my opinion, give BETTER and more professional service if you need to deal with something that comes from the book, but when it comes to one off situations and extenuating circumstances, they are powerless. I think over time, the idea of trying to actually help people gave way to making them either help themselves or be given the impression that they should not call in. It is so hard to get thru sometimes I give up! So that's working. Plus, they still lose money. Why help anyone then?

I could go on, but like the above poster says, "what IS customer service anyway?"

I must add however, that in the opinion of at least 10 people I know, self and wife included, their food is not so great! Service or not, the eats is why I'd go out to, well, eat! Plus there's nothing except the pictures on the wall that is anything remotely australian about anything in the place whatsoever.

so does giving great service mean you need to sell out elsewhere in your business? maybe the fact that the airlines are still able to fly is because they did decide to get THAT right even if the service stinks surrounding travel! I dunno.

I dont know if Unions are always the blame, but I dont know why we need them in airlines. That's an old school model. Big companies that are successful and upbeat and progressive do not have union things, do they?

Think part of the problem isn't just poor customer service but lack of enough people, quality or otherwise. About 3 yrs ago I was flying from VA Beach to South Korea on United. Showed up at the airport 2 hrs early and there was a huge line. Turns out the flight was delayed getting in the night before, crew had to get rest and takeoff time was delayed by 1.5 hrs. Ended up waiting 2 hours just to get to the front of the line because only one agent was on duty. By the time I got up to the front I was so mad I didn't care how nice the agent was, all I saw was red. They ended up screwing me anyway with bad advice and stranded me in LAX.

Bottom line is, even if I had poor customer service and moved on w/in 20 mins I'd still have been a lot more satisfied.

I wonder if one of the reasons that customer service hasn't deteriorated so badly in the airline industry at least among ground personnel, is the sheer volume of customers with whom a limited number of customer service reps must deal. In certain settings the organizational science and business school nostrums about "getting to 'yes'" and all the rest are fairly easy to make work provided the employees are decently trained and rewarded, regardless of whether they are unionized. And lets face it, in most instances the reward people want is money. Flight attendants are not members of a religious order. The reason the clerk in Safeway says "hello, can I help you find something" is because his union negotiated work rules specify that if you've come within a certain distance of him or her, he or she has to recite the script, not because they actually give a rat's ... about you. In order to avoid falling afoul of the secret shopper, the clerk recites the script. (It kind of creeps me out actually; I generally don't have a problem asking "where's the salami" unprompted.)

When you've got hordes of people trying to get on an oversold flight to Duluth, a weather delay and god knows what else going wrong and there are two of you checking in coach passengers, time and other very real constraints make it close to impossible to turn everybody's bad attitude around in the time that you've got.

And lets not kid ourselves, we've had a palpable decline in civility and decent behavior, not over the last 50 years but over the last decade. Stand at an intersection in any busy city and count the cars that gun their engines on the yellow light and speed through the red, or watch as drivers ignore screaming emergency vehicle sirens, or as a customer stands and chats on the cell phone as a clerk is trying to assist them.

And we all want to fly for free or close to it. I'm not an expert, but I imagine that there is not a lot of fat in most airlines these days to pay for top flight - excuse the pun- and recurrent training experiences for their customer service staff, or to offer anything other than a crowded, uncomfortable travel experience with no amenities overseen by sullen, despondent flight attendants. There are exceptions of course, both individuals and companies. But If the unions were gone tomorrow, paying someone $7.50 an hour means you're going to get someone who is not invested in the success of their employer. Fire that person and you'll get someone else at a low rate who is not invested in the company's success. I've had countless instances of badly trained call center people give me what I in my limited knowledge knew to be the wrong information just to get me off the phone and had to call back a few times until I've gotten someone who understood some complex fare rule. But can you reasonably expect expertise at these wages and limited training?

I've gone on way too long when all I wanted to say is that their is not a single source for the problem. There are many convergent sources.

I don't think that most of the "problems" encountered by travelers are the "fault" of the airline. However, the response and care taken by competent employees who realize that their role is to "serve the customer," can create a customer experience that lends itself to a profitable business relationship.

It's when things go wrong that you have the opportunity to exceed customer expectations. Will some people take advantage of you? Of course - but they're not really your customers. Think of that cost as marketing. It lowers your ROI a little, but the ROI with those real customers makes an actual impact on bottom line.

Look at the examples I mentioned above. None of them reflect "free." People will pay for a genuine, positive customer experience. It's why people buy a BMW (aside from status, you pay for the experience).

I stand by my assessment that the root cause of all that is wrong in the airline industry (and for many similar reasons - the auto industry) is the unions. They breed complacency, mediocrity, and incompetency.

Look at the examples I mentioned above. None of them reflect "free." People will pay for a genuine, positive customer experience. It's why people buy a BMW (aside from status, you pay for the experience).

----------------------------------

Yes, but as a percentage of cars on the road, there are way more Kias,Fords, Chevys and Toyotas than BMWs. Sure, a segment will pay for a genuine, positive customer experience, but the majority either can't or won't.

Take my parents: Both retired professionals who travel fairly regularly. They just pick the cheapest fare on expedia, and all their friends are the same.

My siblings are the same.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada

yes, I know these types as well. Not to dis your parents, but some people are among the hundreds of thousands of sorry souls who later find it to be "normal" or like, "cool" or "OK" to sit in some coffee shop or on lunch break and talk about all the problems they have with friends all day and not ever consider that they can and should do something about them, like: dont pick expedia. It can alter or cancel your reservation and you could get SCREWED if you dont know better! "how was your flight?" "ah, well, you know... they got delayed, I had to call for a change, got charged for it. It sucks, you know..." "yeah, I know..." (they dont ask: is there a better way and can we do something to CHANGE things instead of just live with them? and yet, this in itself slows THEM down in the long run, and we all pay for it)

But some people find it too difficult to learn more about travel and just go with what they think is easy, imaginging that since they did enough research to find out about Expedia, that they are now DONE with learning more about computers and online purchasing. It does change but they are stuck in the mid-90s and companies like the airlines who go thru expedia know this market is out there falling for their crap.

Some types of people come from a time or place where they think the system will or should or can fix things and if it does not, that's too bad but they still seem to bicker about it internally. They dont know that these days, with travel, it is slowly withering away and we are the ones who have to make them stop now! If we dont, we are kinda to blame for its demise... And by that, I quote the Sprint thing... where if a complaining customer calls too many times, they cancel your account! now, some people complain too much, but doesnt the acceptence and allowance of this set precident for future worse obtuse treatment on customers by companies who do not nor cannot care less about your needs?