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Showing newest posts with label customer service - Airlines. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label customer service - Airlines. Show older posts

Flying with moron...


Recently, I had a chance to fly Air India. Experiences about my journey with India's flagship airline.

On entering the aircraft, I was expecting to see some old and fat air hostesses who had not smiled for a while. I was partially wrong. Air hostesses were not old and not fat. They were, in fact, very young and pleasant looking. But, they definitely did not know how to smile. 

Another observation. All airlines give a bottle of water once you are on board. Even low cost airlines offer water. But not Air India. 

In food, they provided sandwiches. A customer complained about sandwich being stale. But air hostesses did not care much. And I did not care much about the food.

I know, Air India is on a cost cutting spree these days, as it is running into deep losses, and is continuously asking Government of India to put it back on track. Well, cost cutting is good if it is helping you to cut your losses without hurting customer experience. If cost cutting is hurting your customers then it will do no good to the business.

I am not sure all this is because of cost cutting. This could be a part of their DNA. If it is in their DNA then no matter how much money someone gives them, they will not be able to recover. 

I am hoping for the best. The best for customers.

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Run agent run

Agents are planning to stop working with various airlines. Reason – airlines are planning to scrap the commission fee.

As British Airways and Delta move to a zero commission model from April 1, the
battle between travel agents and foreign airlines over the issue of payment of
commissions has intensified with the threat of halting foreign airlines’
operations out of Mumbai and Delhi airports.
Do customers need agents? I do not think so and here’s why:-

Price disadvantage: - Agents charge certain commission which is passed onto customers by airlines. With online booking system, customer can directly book tickets from internet and commission given to agent will be saved by airlines and some percentage of this saving can be passed onto customer by airlines. It is a win-win situation for customers as well as airlines.

No Convenience: - Internet is convenient as customer can book tickets while sitting at home. He needs not to outside, search for ticket agent and haggle with him to get his tickets booked. Customer can save his energy and time by booking tickets on internet. With agent, apart from money, he has to part with his convenience also.

Gap in service expectation and service delivery: - An airline is promoting themselves as world class airline with ‘luxury’ as their middle name and markets themselves as customer friendly airline. Well, customer sitting in dingy agent office, sitting with agent who does not know believes in customer friendliness, can certainly feel the gap in service expectation and service delivery which is not in the interest of airline. Customers also want to avoid such bad experiences.

Agents were required in old world of business as airlines wanted to reach out to customers in every nook and corner. Now internet has reached in far flung areas. Agents were reliable and responsive but so is internet. Agents need to look at the ways where in they can add value to customers and airlines. They need to lead the industry by helping them in doing more personalized marketing to customers.

They need to run or else their end is near.

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