I recently had an experience that really stands out – but not in a good way. Some days are so bad you want to forget about them, but you are not able to put it out of your mind. I recently had one of those days where everything went wrong, with bad service experiences layered on top of it. Nothing about this customer journey went correctly or as planned.
Let me set the stage, I was on the East Coast of the U.S. for work finishing up on Friday. My goal was to get to the Mountain States as early as possible on Saturday as there was a rare occurrence of all three of my grown kids being at the same place for the weekend – possibly the last time until perhaps the end of the year. I already had an early morning flight with a connection on Saturday morning that had me arriving just after noon locally.
While I was already checked in, my preferred airline frequently offers the option to take an earlier or later flight where there is seat availability. Noting there was a Friday evening flight that would get me halfway there that was practically empty, I thought I’d try to see if I could make the change. Instead, their mobile application informed me that it would be nearly $1,100 to make that change – which would have still had me boarding a morning flight and getting there only three hours sooner. Content that I had the best option based on the opportunity-cost, I settled with my early morning flight.
No matter how many times you do it, those 4 A.M. alarms still never feel really good. I was up and going, I checked the flight status and everything seemed to be going well. I arrived at the airport, got myself situated at the gate, then the first delay was called. Apparently while we all woke up on time, our flight crew would be a little late arriving at the airport. Checking the connection time versus the updated departure time, things seemed like they would still be fine.
As soon as the crew arrived, we boarded the plane and were on our way. As we climbed after take-off, the next hiccup on this trip occurred – the left engine of the airplane seized up. A very serious moment for sure, but we found ourselves turning around to the airport. After landing and lining up with the gate agent to find out “what’s next?”, I was fortunate enough to be third in line – though I may have wished that I was fifth.
The first four of us were informed that the flight had not been canceled, merely delayed while they assessed the problem – therefore they would not be accepting any flight changes. No more than two minutes after I left an extremely long queue, the gate agent announced that the flight was canceled. Instead of being at the front of the line, I was instead pushed to the back of a very long line.
As I waited to discover what options I may have, I called the airline support center. During the first call, I was told I would have to wait until the flight was officially canceled before they could do anything. Despite my plea that they had already informed us that it was canceled, the agent said they could not help. As I waited in line, I received the first of over a dozen text messages that day where the “airline apologized for the delay and thanked me for my patience”.
However, that message prompted me to the support desk again, this time their systems showed the cancellation and they were able to book me on the only remaining option that would get me there that same day – a connection through a different city continuing on to my final destination almost seven hours later than originally planned.
The frustrating part about all this at that moment, two other flights to hub cities had taken off with available seats between my original flight returning to the gate and the notification. I could have been on my way.
After a three hour wait until my next flight, I thought I was on my way. After we boarded however, the flight was delayed. My connection was already fairly tight and it would require a long run across a very big airport. As I watched my connection window shrink under five minutes, they announced that we would now be taking off without any explanation for the delays.
As we landed, my connecting flight was still showing as an on-time departure. Time for me to run. As I took every last ounce of energy to get to my connecting gate, I arrived to everyone queued up to board. I was fortunate to get there with enough time and boarded the plane. As we backed away from the jet bridge, an announcement came that we would be delayed while they checked on an error light…a few more minutes and the second mechanical delay of the day was announced. Time to get off the plane that I had just rushed to get to.
This is where the customer experience took a very sour turn. It was announced that there would be a plane change which required a gate change and that we should immediately go to a new gate – again all the way across the airport – so we can board the new plane and take off soon. It left many people hurrying, running and sweating to arrive at the new gate..to nothing. No agent, nothing on the information board and no plane at the gate. The agent at the gate next to us told passengers that the plane is still departing out of the original gate, which is also what was showing on the mobile application and flight information boards. Remembering an advertised “new” feature that allowed me to have an online chat with a “local” agent. Scan the QR code and you are connected, sounds like a great option at the moment.
This online chat went off the rails quickly; after offering a detailed explanation about the confusion and emphasizing there was no one at the gate to answer my question, the initial response was “proceed to the new gate and confirm with the local gate agent”. I again stated there was no agent at the gate, and I was concerned with the conflicting information. I wondered if I was providing enough information, so I added even more context. The response was that this chat agent was not at the airport (contrary to the promotion), and that I should “do whatever I want”. **End of Chat**
“What I want”? I wanted to be at my destination, but they were not helpful in that endeavor; it sounded like I was on my own. When I contacted the support center by phone again, I was given push back that they could not do anything except put me on a flight the next day with the possibility of getting to my destination by Monday, when I needed to be flying back to my next order of business. If I did not take that option, they could not make a promise as to when they could get me to my intended destination or my next destination because “there had been quite a few cancellations”.
I usually say that it is important to bring emotional engagement into your customer experience strategy, but this might have been the wrong emotion they are eliciting from me. I committed to the existing routing as it gave me the best chance to get some family time. An agent finally showed up at one point, only to announce that there would be a mechanical delay because of a tire that needed to be changed. A little while later, another agent showed up to “apologize for the delay” and offer us dinner due to the inconvenience – bags of chips and warm bottles of water.
Since we were in an area of the airport that had limited access to concessions, we didn’t have many options. After several more hours of delays and many more text messages “apologizing for the delay and thanking me for my patience”, we were finally on our way. Unfortunately, by the time we landed, the rental car facility in this small airport was already closed for the night, so I had to make alternative arrangements. In the end, what should have been two flight segments on two planes turned into:
- 3 mechanical delays
- 4 different aircraft (and boarding all four even though only two moved me forward)
- 14 text messages “apologizing for the delay”
- 11 hours of total delay (with 3 hours of them telling us to stay by the gate awaiting further information)
Probably one of the worst flight experiences I’ve had in the past 10+ years. Even worse, the way this airline has set up their customer experience software platform, I will not even be offered a survey because they feel they have closed the customer feedback loop simply by “apologizing for the delay” by text message. There will be no feedback across the other customer experience touchpoints, no opportunity to understand my frustration through sentiment analysis, and really nothing that will provide a clear view of a financial linkage analysis.
What was missing from the entire experience was empathy. During the entire experience, only one employee ever truly listened to the customer story and showed genuine empathy for the situation. This could come back to the employee experience, where they have policies and procedures to protect the company but not considering the customers.
A true Voice-of-the-Customer should not only have multiple outlets for customers to express their sentiments but also be able to consolidate that feedback across the entire customer journey map. Beyond just closing the loop on an individual survey, the ability to leverage a tool like Outer Loop with baseline assessments from root causes as we have with QuestionPro NPS+. Even further, interaction with a social media analysis tool like CX Reputation and combining all that data into the single CX Enterprise Software for understanding the entire customer journey – and not just a CRM – is necessary to make all these pieces work together.
I will end up flying this airline again, I have heard the horror stories of other airlines as well. If I preach anything to any organization, figure out how to execute empathy at scale. During my social media interactions with this airline, I made the sarcastic remark that they’d probably try to compensate me for “my inconvenience” with something that equates to a couple dollars per hour of airline miles, here was where I was proven wrong. Instead of $2 per hour of disruption, I was instead given nearly $5 worth of airline miles for each hour of disruption (nevermind the additional costs of being stranded and the missed time with family along with all the frustration). I guess I can “do what I want”, as long as I don’t plan on doing it with the miles they “awarded” me.
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