When efficiency wins over customer focus

Follow-up on the Valencia Sales Training, click here to read the first part.

Finally being back in Lausanne after having changed the air carrier from Easyjet to Swiss Airlines.

The former was just cancelling two flights in a row with little information (1st cancellation with an SMS, 2nd cancellation without any information), and -- even worse -- without any chance to get any additional information from anyone. Yes, there is a phone number, but that one is only set up to keep people busy in machine driven automated conversations. No answers - no solutions.

What a difference with the latter - Swiss Airlines - to which we shifted our flight booking after the 2nd cancellation by Easyjet. There were real people to talk to who gave helpful advice. The flight went from Barcelona with 2.5 hours delay to Zurich with a corresponding flight to Geneva. And they did really everything to bring the customers to Geneva -- arrival time 00:45.

The moral of this story:

1. If you choose a low cost product (like Easyjet) never ever expect any service beyond to what you directly paid for. If you have to change your mindset before then do so!
2. An organisation running all its customer facing processes without any human interfaces risks to understate the importance of human relations -- even in the case of low cost products. They run a risky strategy and forget their most important source: the clients.
   Look at Toyata to see what happens if companies rate process efficiency higher than customer experience. When the mighty fall...

End of story. Volkmar

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Comments

[Bill Morrison]

I suppose one of the benefits that classic scheduled airlines have which they do not seem to sell very hard is the fact that they have a virtual guarentee of liablity if your flights are disrupted.

They should consider making that part of their sales story since people are obviously wiling to pay for insurance against risk.