What industry is ranked lower in customer satisfaction than the Internal Revenue Service? If you guessed the airline industry, you’d be right.
The airline industry scored 63 (out of 100) on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The airlines’ worst score ever was two points below the IRS, notorious for having a bad reputation.
In addition, at a time when fuel costs are soaring, bags that go missing on a passenger’s arrival, cost the airline industry roughly $4 billion per year, according to SITA, a Swiss airline technology provider (as reported in Business Week Travel News July 30, 2008). Last year, customers in the U.S. filed over 7.5 million mishandled baggage reports—roughly seven per 1,000 passengers. Were you one of them?
Some experts say these costs could be reduced dramatically, and complaints minimized, if airlines would take passenger convenience more seriously. Although eliminating mishandled bags altogether is a near-impossibility, some airlines and airports have successfully cut down on missing bags.
At a time when airlines have resorted to cutting flights, stripping away passenger conveniences, and even slowing down planes to offset fuel costs, they are overlooking an opportunity to save money, and at the same time, improve customer service.
Just recently the TV news reported that there was a computer glitch regarding baggage at JFK Airport in New York. Passengers were given a choice: Take your flight and leave your luggage, or miss your flight and (try and) find your luggage. And some weren’t even given this option but learned of missing luggage while on the tarmac awaiting take-off. This sounds humorous but it is no laughing matter when it happens to you.
With airlines expected to pay more than $60 billion for jet fuel this year, you’d think they’d be eager to find ways to save money and improver customer service. By the way, the cost of returning a missing bag to its owner, including fuel, manpower, and ground transportation, is estimated at around $90 by the International Air Transport Association, and at more than $100 by some airlines. Plus, an airline is liable for up to $3,000 for having lost luggage.
As important, however, is the cost of repeat business. If the airlines loses my luggage, they have a good possibility of losing me as a customer. My dissatisffaction (and I bet yours as well) negatively impacts trust of that (or any) airline. The truth is maybe I’d let it go once, but never a second time.
What is the cost of a bad customer experience? What is the cost of losing that lifetime customer? This has been addressed in previous columns but we all know it’s high.
But does losing luggage happen? Of course. The challenge and opportunity is how to deal with the customer to make the experience the least horrific as possible. Actually many bags are returned, just late – beyond the date I need it for my suit for a presentation; the person who needs the bridemaid’s dress for a wedding; the present for someone’s parent’s 60th aniversary; the special jewelry someone bought you, and so on.
How an incident is handled as well as the prompt return of misdirected luggage is paramount. Customers talk on and on about the negative customer service experience long after the luggage (hopefully) has been returned. The relationship created by the customer service department with you, the customer, is what lives on well beyond the flight.
In fact it often becomes a ‘war story’ that has humor attached to it six months or a year after. But again if it’s a negative experience, won’t you think twice before flying that airlines again in the future?
At the present time and for the last 10 years, I travel with carry on luggage only. It’s not easy, but I’m a good packer, have one rollerboard and my laptop case on wheels. It’s a bit of a hassle getting me on and off the planes, but I get where I’m going and more importantly, so does my luggage (and of course, I don’t have to wait and watch the carousel go round and round hoping mine will show up shortly).
In spite of rising fuel costs, security issues and labor woes, Delta’s CEO James Whitehurst commented in a recent MSNBC story that “the root cause of why we are in bankruptcy is because we lost sight of the customer.”
Accoring to a Business Week article, airlines with the lowest rates of mishandled bags attribute their success to the human touch.
This is not a coincidence. The human touch will never be replaced. And I believe this is a training issue. How do I, a customer service representative, listen to what is being said, empathize, diffuse any upset, frustration, anger, etc. take great care of the customer and then follow through on tracking and delivering the lost luggage and keep the customer in the loop (to avoid unnecessary callbacks).
The author strongly believes that achieving high levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty takes an investment in your people. For example, Home Depot made a $350 million investment in store operations, new hires, and more training, which helped them improve their ACSI ranking by 4.5 points in 2006.
Good customer service requires a number of things: A clear customer-centric mission statement, hire for attitude, teach aptitude, training programs that not only give people the skills they need, but teach them experientially, such that they can implement, and a feedback system that not only reflects how they are doing, but is used as input for kicking it up a notch.