Complaint Management - Airline Industry
Managing Complaints at 35000 ft:
The turn of the century has rapidly led to the swift morphing of the customer services industry as an industry within industries. Be it any corporate firm or any commercial enterprise or indeed the airline industry with which we are currently concerned, its edifice rests on the central pillar of customer services. It would indeed be accurate to say that in the progressively competitive global commercial arena, the driving force is undoubtedly the business's financial superiority. This entails, essentially speaking, the attainment and sustenance of the all-important and exceptionally valuable phenomenon of customer satisfaction. This determinant in itself influences, sways and transforms markets; it may be credited with the boom of an industry and the downfall of another. The undeniable and indispensable sovereignty of the customer especially in the free market, laissez faire scenario is therefore an undisputed notion. Jerry Fritz aptly endorses the aforementioned assertion when he says that "You'll never have a product or price advantage again. This can easily be duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can't be copied."
Sooty Albatrosses Hovering Up in the Air:
The challenge for the corporate and commercial world is therefore to provide the highest quality products and services and to do so unerringly. The achievement of such practice and ethic is an absurdity divorced from reality of and the inevitable departure from this perfection leads to dissatisfied and often disgruntled customers coming forth with complaints. The consequences of not attending to these complaints cannot be borne by any enterprise and will reveal themselves as financial setbacks in the long run as well as loss of goodwill. It is for these reasons precisely that much time and money is devoted and invested in customer services and customer complaint management by airlines.
Air travel is associated with an almost defamatory level of nuisance. The complaint lodged by customers are not few or far between. The phenomenon is shamefully redundant and profoundly persistent with the same complaints being registered time and again. Customers flying form one destination to the next for business, leisure purposes or in case of emergencies are now acquainted with hassles that transpire inconvenience, discomfort and overall dissatisfaction, with customers complaining as a norm that they did not get their money's worth.
Complaints got Airlines on ball and chain:
The Global Airline Statistics reported by the International Air Transport Association in March 2012 shows a 7.6% increase in total passenger demand. Common sense and ethic require that this be matched with the necessary upgrades by the airlines so that a greater audience may efficiently be catered to before the flight as well as during and after the flight. More customers mean more customer complaints and greater burden on the airline to address and rectify these issues. The myriad of complaints that customers report have flight delays and cancellations as the undisputed champions. Tarmac delays have risen to become the rule rather than the rare exceptions that they used to be. The implications are greater than mere agitation associated with waiting at the airport or in the aircraft. Funerals are missed, honeymoons are spoiled, important meeting delayed and the holiday spirit is paled right at the beginning of the journey. Indeed there are those for whom the journey is just as important as the destination to be reached.
Baggage handling adds to the misery of the passengers. Long security lines, uncomfortable seats, not enough leg room, incidents involving pets, lack of immediate or individual attention by the staff on board, reservations, ticketing, delay in refunds, boarding, over sales, schedule changes, inadequate arrangements for the disabled as well as discrimination, add to degrading the experience into a highly unpleasant one. There are then the high fares that pierce through the customer's wallets for there is fees for everything beyond and oxygen mask and a seat belt; either of the two items are often defective. Much of the complaint content can be attributed to the mergers with respect to fleets, labor groups and computer systems that are taking place between several major players. Rude or incompetent service amidst such a backdrop adds fuel to the fire. Luxury is the commanding value of the global society; it being the apotheosis of a capitalist set up. Hence compromise on this particular aspect can dent market dominance in the long run.
Passenger is Always Right¦ Period!:
Complaint management therefore lies at the heart of the airline industry; a complaint well managed and a customer pleased and accommodated covers a multitude of inconveniences. The procedure is straight enough. One has to merely pick up the phone, call customer services of the particular airline and lodge the complaint along with how they want to be compensated. E-mails can be sent and the complaints can be reported in person as well. The complaints must be addressed artfully and dealt with all the inconveniences. Stew Leonard's advice is priceless in this regard:
Rule 1: The customer is always right.
Rule 2: If ever the customer is wrong, read the rule 1 again.
The staff and personnel dealing with complaints must have training and tactfully deal with customers whose expectations have not been met. Investment in this may seem like a fruitless exercise but it must be understood that the opportunity of not catering efficiently and effectively to the grievances of the clientele is high and return on any pursuit of ensuring such a practice is, in the long run, an inevitable surety. If the airlines pay no heed to the complaints made, customers may approach the relevant government department responsible for looking over transportation like the Department of Transportation in America and the Civil Aviation Authority in UK.
An unfortunate discovery is that most complaints that customers make are with respect to the complaint handling process itself. The government in this respect must adopt an interventionist approach. Reasonable and genuine efforts for dealing with the complaint should be ensured and a minimum standard must be set out as a yardstick for measuring what constitutes such efforts. Customer protection must be imparted and airlines that do not adhere may be penalized. Customers must have an adequate route to hearken their grievances, one that vanquishes the need for legal recourse. Problems of refund and exchange can entail technicalities. The rules pertaining to these must be spelled out for the benefit of the customers and any changes made must be publicized.
Managing complaints is a task and a half which must be executed in a timely manner. Quality management must be incorporated. There is now a developing trend of instrumentalizing the social media for registering and lodging complaint. Facebook and Twitter emerge as the torchbearers in this respect and allow customers to lodge complaints even before takeoff. This avenue for making complaints facilitates instantaneous communication. The correspondence between the customer and the airline is aide and this, in turn, lends efficacy to the complaint management process. Continual increase in the usage of such instantaneous modes of communication have unavoidably led to airlines manning their websites and social pages around the clock. Vigilance here is the cardinal trait to be internalized and incorporated. It must also be seen to that language and accessibility pose no hurdle and do not impede the process. The complaint lodging mechanism must also be a fairly simple one, which can be easily grasped by the common customer and must be devoid of irrelevant and complex technicalities. Red tapism must be at a minimum.
Pandemic Anomaly:
The airlines services and customer complaints management conundrum is a global phenomenon, associated more with metropolitan areas. The trend varies in degree in different regions but not in direction as such. The Department of Transportation (USA) reported in January 2013 that the number of complaints lodged had soared by 46% with 1368 complaints being reported in 2012. The Civil Aviation Authority of UK reports that a total of 1240 complaints were lodged in 2012, with the client satisfaction index dipping nearly 3%. The index rose in the next quarter from 67 to 68, which is still lower than other industries. However, this is still better than airlines in America, which have an average score of 66. Indeed British Airways ranked as the 5th best airline in Europe at the World Airline Awards 2012 with American Airlines not securing any recognizable rank.
Complaint management has rapidly emerged as a forum for generating loyalty, goodwill and word-of-mouth publicity. It is akin to an opportunity being afforded to the airline by the customer to restore any goodwill lost. There is then the critical nature of complaints which in itself provides valuable feedback and constructive guidelines for improving products, adapting market practices, upgrading services, or modifying promotional material and product information. A customer lost is gained by a rival enterprise with the added set back with which negative word-of-mouth publicity entails. The burden to be borne by the airline industry in the long run can never be over-estimated. Hence the interplay between customer service, complaint management and the financial prospect of airlines necessitates much be devoted to complaint management.
Compartmentalizing the Complaint Management:
The airlines globally, must order their complaint management by way of schemas which ultimately ensure to achieve maximum customer satisfaction with adequate and fair remedies. A system that is structured, formatted, tiered and compartmentalized to deal with the varying complaints must be in place. Complaints must be categorized so that they may be dealt with a manner appropriate to their nature. The process is easy and the results are almost certain, if the plan is well-intentioned. The complaint must be received, evaluated, acted upon and resolved. This four step routine is the 'mantra' of Qatar Airways which has been awarded the best airline in the world for the years 2011 and 2012. The lesson to be learnt is: ignorance is anything but bliss!
The turn of the century has rapidly led to the swift morphing of the customer services industry as an industry within industries. Be it any corporate firm or any commercial enterprise or indeed the airline industry with which we are currently concerned, its edifice rests on the central pillar of customer services. It would indeed be accurate to say that in the progressively competitive global commercial arena, the driving force is undoubtedly the business's financial superiority. This entails, essentially speaking, the attainment and sustenance of the all-important and exceptionally valuable phenomenon of customer satisfaction. This determinant in itself influences, sways and transforms markets; it may be credited with the boom of an industry and the downfall of another. The undeniable and indispensable sovereignty of the customer especially in the free market, laissez faire scenario is therefore an undisputed notion. Jerry Fritz aptly endorses the aforementioned assertion when he says that "You'll never have a product or price advantage again. This can easily be duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can't be copied."
Sooty Albatrosses Hovering Up in the Air:
The challenge for the corporate and commercial world is therefore to provide the highest quality products and services and to do so unerringly. The achievement of such practice and ethic is an absurdity divorced from reality of and the inevitable departure from this perfection leads to dissatisfied and often disgruntled customers coming forth with complaints. The consequences of not attending to these complaints cannot be borne by any enterprise and will reveal themselves as financial setbacks in the long run as well as loss of goodwill. It is for these reasons precisely that much time and money is devoted and invested in customer services and customer complaint management by airlines.
Air travel is associated with an almost defamatory level of nuisance. The complaint lodged by customers are not few or far between. The phenomenon is shamefully redundant and profoundly persistent with the same complaints being registered time and again. Customers flying form one destination to the next for business, leisure purposes or in case of emergencies are now acquainted with hassles that transpire inconvenience, discomfort and overall dissatisfaction, with customers complaining as a norm that they did not get their money's worth.
Complaints got Airlines on ball and chain:
The Global Airline Statistics reported by the International Air Transport Association in March 2012 shows a 7.6% increase in total passenger demand. Common sense and ethic require that this be matched with the necessary upgrades by the airlines so that a greater audience may efficiently be catered to before the flight as well as during and after the flight. More customers mean more customer complaints and greater burden on the airline to address and rectify these issues. The myriad of complaints that customers report have flight delays and cancellations as the undisputed champions. Tarmac delays have risen to become the rule rather than the rare exceptions that they used to be. The implications are greater than mere agitation associated with waiting at the airport or in the aircraft. Funerals are missed, honeymoons are spoiled, important meeting delayed and the holiday spirit is paled right at the beginning of the journey. Indeed there are those for whom the journey is just as important as the destination to be reached.
Baggage handling adds to the misery of the passengers. Long security lines, uncomfortable seats, not enough leg room, incidents involving pets, lack of immediate or individual attention by the staff on board, reservations, ticketing, delay in refunds, boarding, over sales, schedule changes, inadequate arrangements for the disabled as well as discrimination, add to degrading the experience into a highly unpleasant one. There are then the high fares that pierce through the customer's wallets for there is fees for everything beyond and oxygen mask and a seat belt; either of the two items are often defective. Much of the complaint content can be attributed to the mergers with respect to fleets, labor groups and computer systems that are taking place between several major players. Rude or incompetent service amidst such a backdrop adds fuel to the fire. Luxury is the commanding value of the global society; it being the apotheosis of a capitalist set up. Hence compromise on this particular aspect can dent market dominance in the long run.
Passenger is Always Right¦ Period!:
Complaint management therefore lies at the heart of the airline industry; a complaint well managed and a customer pleased and accommodated covers a multitude of inconveniences. The procedure is straight enough. One has to merely pick up the phone, call customer services of the particular airline and lodge the complaint along with how they want to be compensated. E-mails can be sent and the complaints can be reported in person as well. The complaints must be addressed artfully and dealt with all the inconveniences. Stew Leonard's advice is priceless in this regard:
Rule 1: The customer is always right.
Rule 2: If ever the customer is wrong, read the rule 1 again.
The staff and personnel dealing with complaints must have training and tactfully deal with customers whose expectations have not been met. Investment in this may seem like a fruitless exercise but it must be understood that the opportunity of not catering efficiently and effectively to the grievances of the clientele is high and return on any pursuit of ensuring such a practice is, in the long run, an inevitable surety. If the airlines pay no heed to the complaints made, customers may approach the relevant government department responsible for looking over transportation like the Department of Transportation in America and the Civil Aviation Authority in UK.
An unfortunate discovery is that most complaints that customers make are with respect to the complaint handling process itself. The government in this respect must adopt an interventionist approach. Reasonable and genuine efforts for dealing with the complaint should be ensured and a minimum standard must be set out as a yardstick for measuring what constitutes such efforts. Customer protection must be imparted and airlines that do not adhere may be penalized. Customers must have an adequate route to hearken their grievances, one that vanquishes the need for legal recourse. Problems of refund and exchange can entail technicalities. The rules pertaining to these must be spelled out for the benefit of the customers and any changes made must be publicized.
Managing complaints is a task and a half which must be executed in a timely manner. Quality management must be incorporated. There is now a developing trend of instrumentalizing the social media for registering and lodging complaint. Facebook and Twitter emerge as the torchbearers in this respect and allow customers to lodge complaints even before takeoff. This avenue for making complaints facilitates instantaneous communication. The correspondence between the customer and the airline is aide and this, in turn, lends efficacy to the complaint management process. Continual increase in the usage of such instantaneous modes of communication have unavoidably led to airlines manning their websites and social pages around the clock. Vigilance here is the cardinal trait to be internalized and incorporated. It must also be seen to that language and accessibility pose no hurdle and do not impede the process. The complaint lodging mechanism must also be a fairly simple one, which can be easily grasped by the common customer and must be devoid of irrelevant and complex technicalities. Red tapism must be at a minimum.
Pandemic Anomaly:
The airlines services and customer complaints management conundrum is a global phenomenon, associated more with metropolitan areas. The trend varies in degree in different regions but not in direction as such. The Department of Transportation (USA) reported in January 2013 that the number of complaints lodged had soared by 46% with 1368 complaints being reported in 2012. The Civil Aviation Authority of UK reports that a total of 1240 complaints were lodged in 2012, with the client satisfaction index dipping nearly 3%. The index rose in the next quarter from 67 to 68, which is still lower than other industries. However, this is still better than airlines in America, which have an average score of 66. Indeed British Airways ranked as the 5th best airline in Europe at the World Airline Awards 2012 with American Airlines not securing any recognizable rank.
Complaint management has rapidly emerged as a forum for generating loyalty, goodwill and word-of-mouth publicity. It is akin to an opportunity being afforded to the airline by the customer to restore any goodwill lost. There is then the critical nature of complaints which in itself provides valuable feedback and constructive guidelines for improving products, adapting market practices, upgrading services, or modifying promotional material and product information. A customer lost is gained by a rival enterprise with the added set back with which negative word-of-mouth publicity entails. The burden to be borne by the airline industry in the long run can never be over-estimated. Hence the interplay between customer service, complaint management and the financial prospect of airlines necessitates much be devoted to complaint management.
Compartmentalizing the Complaint Management:
The airlines globally, must order their complaint management by way of schemas which ultimately ensure to achieve maximum customer satisfaction with adequate and fair remedies. A system that is structured, formatted, tiered and compartmentalized to deal with the varying complaints must be in place. Complaints must be categorized so that they may be dealt with a manner appropriate to their nature. The process is easy and the results are almost certain, if the plan is well-intentioned. The complaint must be received, evaluated, acted upon and resolved. This four step routine is the 'mantra' of Qatar Airways which has been awarded the best airline in the world for the years 2011 and 2012. The lesson to be learnt is: ignorance is anything but bliss!
