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The key to any service business is to think ahead about the experience for your clients and do the things in advance to make sure what you do leaves them satisfied – or even ecstatic.
We all have our Air Canada stories and, recently, I saw again in action how not to provide a service for your clients.
On a trip back to Halifax I was full of energy from a good working day and having made it on time to catch my flight home. There were no weather issues anywhere so I had visions of a departure promptly on time, a smooth flight, and being home with some of my night still ahead of me to relax. How quickly our dreams are dashed.
Sitting patiently at the gate, I noticed the departure notice said “On Time!” and boarding would start at 6:20pm. The exclamation mark built my confidence even further. It was going to be a great flight.
Then something started to turn over in my stomach providing that uneasy feeling that things were going to go downhill fast. 6:20pm had arrived and no airplane was at the gate. The two gate attendants said nothing, the “On Time!” sign still showed, so why worry? 6:45pm – no plane and no sign changes – a little worry creeps in. 6:55pm – our departure time – no plane and no sign changes – more worry and people around are starting to get a little restless. Around 7:10pm one of the attendants came on the speaker, “You may have noticed the plane has not arrived yet but it is on its way and you should be leaving by 7:30pm.” The “On Time!” sign changed to 7:30pm – suspicious worry now (if the plane wasn’t even there at the gate by 7:10pm, how could we leave by 7:30pm? No one explained. Finally the plane is seen at the gate at 7:30pm – the crowd is happy and tempers are residing. People start coming off the plane and we are getting ourselves ready for boarding. Then it stops – no more passengers disembark and no one makes a move. It is 7:45pm – what gives? Neither of the attendants say a word, they just walk away and go down the ramp to the plane. What’s up – people start to fidget again.
Like nothing I have ever seen then takes place. Two by two, the gate attendants wheel off people in wheelchairs from the plane. People around me actually start counting … 4 wheelchairs, 10 wheelchairs, 16 wheelchairs – you get the picture. Finally, 22 people in wheelchairs have been helped from the plane and lined up behind the gate. It was now 8:45pm! Then, the one attendant starts wheeling them away and the other attendant gets behind the desk. She actually has the nerve to say over the speaker, “Well, we will not be leaving at 7:30pm – we had a little delay disembarking the passengers and expect to have you out of here by 9:30pm. Thanks for your patience.”
Are you kidding me? The people around me were not happy and it was actually interesting as an experiment to watch how seemingly nice people degenerated into very hostile, foul-mouthed complainers. Compassion for people in wheelchairs quickly turned to obscene comments.
We actually finally left the gate at 9:45pm with people in bad moods and hating Air Canada. Although we were all offered “a bag of complimentary nuts” because we were so patient, I don’t think the mood changed.
What could have been done differently? OMG! Communication could have helped. Air Canada knew two hours before our flight was originally scheduled to leave that the plane would be late because they also took that amount of time to load all the people in wheelchairs. They could have had more attendants at the gate to help move the people off the plane. Actually, the originating Air Canada gate would have known well in advance that 22 wheelchairs were needed and could have planned ahead to have more attendants to help them on. Real times could have been put up at the gates. Just treat us like adults and communicate!
Honestly – the golden rule of service is simple … think ahead and do what you can to make your client’s experience exceptional. Instead, lack of communication and poor planning creates only hostility, bad relations, and lost business. The service adage really shouldn’t be “we’re not happy until you’re not happy.”
The moral of the story – think ahead, think about the client, do the right thing and communicate.
Just my thinking …
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Air Canada has a policy not to communicate. We had the same non-communication coming from London, UK to Toronto. No plane, no communication. Finnaly they put us up in a hotel, but in the morning, the no communication policy started again, as no bus to take us back to the airport; we all could have walked to the airport before the bus showed up. I thought the hotel was going to be destroyed as the people were so hostile. The flight back was not a friendly as it could have been, but hey, their no communication policy is a major problem for Air Canada. Flying the friendly skys is just a saying!