After safety, customer service should be the next highest priority of any airline. Customer service means making your customers feel welcome, valued, and cared for. Customer service is easy when things go smoothly, whether it be your stay at a hotel, a purchase with which you're totally satisfied ... or a flight that's right on time.
But the true test of any business's customer service comes when things go awry. The very best companies respond instantly and instinctively to take care of their customers. This involves a non-defensive apology, an explanation when requested, and an appropriate service recovery given the circumstances. Everyone makes mistakes, and responding well to a mistake makes you shine in your customer's eyes. The key thing: have a system in place to deal with your customers on the spot and empower your employees to solve problems.
But sometimes a company's customer service sucks so badly that the only recourse left is telling the story. As Travel Horizons has been viewed a quarter million times since its inception, this story will have legs; feel free to share it on Facebook or Twitter. It all began Monday morning when I arrived at OGG for my flight home to OAK. Flight was scheduled to depart at 11:30 a.m. with a scheduled arrival at 6:44 p.m. The flight actually departed at 6:02 p.m. with an actual arrival of 1:07 a.m. Tuesday morning.
We left seven hours late. The initial reason was a mechanical issue with the plane. We could see the cover to the right engine was open from the gate. Fair enough. Safety is always the first priority, and we wouldn't want to fly until the problem was fixed. But when it becomes apparent is that the repair is taking much too long, customers would like to hear something more substantial than "we have nothing to say at the moment, but we'll have another update in 45 minutes."
Real information, please! Just tell us the truth. What is the problem and why is it taking so long. There's an oil leak. Or, we need a new part, and we're flying it in from Honolulu. Or, we're bringing in a different plane. Eventually they towed away the plane so that another flight could use the gate ... and the hours of radio silence grew longer.
Eventually we were told that the plane was fixed, and that it would be brought to a different gate. So we went to the new gate, where we waited, and waited ... and waited some more. If the plane wasn't ready, why tell us it was? If it was ready, why make us wait? Again, total silence on anything substantive.
To add insult to injury, after finally boarding the plane, we had to wait an additional hour. Reason? The plane hadn't been given enough fuel, and then the fuel had to be rebalanced, and because it had taken so long to gas up the plane, Hawaiian had to file a new flight plan and wait for some paperwork.
Conclusions
1. Hawaiian Airlines doesn't have a plan in place to deal with their customers when flights are delayed. No real information was ever provided.
2. Hawaiian Airlines [apparently] doesn't have a Customer Service Manager in charge whose job it is to ensure that inconvenienced customers are made to feel valued ... and that the airline's full resources are being utlized to minimize any delay.
3. Hawaiian Airlines hasn't seen fit to reply to the objective report I wrote during the flight and provided to the flight attendants. If a business doesn't have a system in place to listen to what their customers are saying and to respond to their customer's concerns, that's pretty bad. I had a paid First Class ticket, and I'd like to think that an airline would want to make a high revenue passenger feel valued.
4. Alaska Airlines flies the same route. Guess who I'm flying next time I go to Hawaii!
But the true test of any business's customer service comes when things go awry. The very best companies respond instantly and instinctively to take care of their customers. This involves a non-defensive apology, an explanation when requested, and an appropriate service recovery given the circumstances. Everyone makes mistakes, and responding well to a mistake makes you shine in your customer's eyes. The key thing: have a system in place to deal with your customers on the spot and empower your employees to solve problems.
But sometimes a company's customer service sucks so badly that the only recourse left is telling the story. As Travel Horizons has been viewed a quarter million times since its inception, this story will have legs; feel free to share it on Facebook or Twitter. It all began Monday morning when I arrived at OGG for my flight home to OAK. Flight was scheduled to depart at 11:30 a.m. with a scheduled arrival at 6:44 p.m. The flight actually departed at 6:02 p.m. with an actual arrival of 1:07 a.m. Tuesday morning.
We left seven hours late. The initial reason was a mechanical issue with the plane. We could see the cover to the right engine was open from the gate. Fair enough. Safety is always the first priority, and we wouldn't want to fly until the problem was fixed. But when it becomes apparent is that the repair is taking much too long, customers would like to hear something more substantial than "we have nothing to say at the moment, but we'll have another update in 45 minutes."
Real information, please! Just tell us the truth. What is the problem and why is it taking so long. There's an oil leak. Or, we need a new part, and we're flying it in from Honolulu. Or, we're bringing in a different plane. Eventually they towed away the plane so that another flight could use the gate ... and the hours of radio silence grew longer.
Eventually we were told that the plane was fixed, and that it would be brought to a different gate. So we went to the new gate, where we waited, and waited ... and waited some more. If the plane wasn't ready, why tell us it was? If it was ready, why make us wait? Again, total silence on anything substantive.
To add insult to injury, after finally boarding the plane, we had to wait an additional hour. Reason? The plane hadn't been given enough fuel, and then the fuel had to be rebalanced, and because it had taken so long to gas up the plane, Hawaiian had to file a new flight plan and wait for some paperwork.
Conclusions
1. Hawaiian Airlines doesn't have a plan in place to deal with their customers when flights are delayed. No real information was ever provided.
2. Hawaiian Airlines [apparently] doesn't have a Customer Service Manager in charge whose job it is to ensure that inconvenienced customers are made to feel valued ... and that the airline's full resources are being utlized to minimize any delay.
3. Hawaiian Airlines hasn't seen fit to reply to the objective report I wrote during the flight and provided to the flight attendants. If a business doesn't have a system in place to listen to what their customers are saying and to respond to their customer's concerns, that's pretty bad. I had a paid First Class ticket, and I'd like to think that an airline would want to make a high revenue passenger feel valued.
4. Alaska Airlines flies the same route. Guess who I'm flying next time I go to Hawaii!
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