First Class Customer Service???

First Class Customer Service???

I have made a commitment to never use my blog to just complain. So I’m going to outline a few service failures as a lesson to all of us who understand that delivering superior customer service is essential to business success.

I recently had a trip to New Zealand on business, on the way there my wife and I flew First Class with Air New Zealand and had an absolutely spectacular experience. The staff was extremely friendly, the food was excellent, great wine, laydown bed, everything you could possibly ask for on a 14-hour flight to the other side of the world. On the way back we flew First Class onAmerican Airlines. When we got on board we noticed they were serving champagne to the other folks in the First Class cabin and when we asked for some they apologized and said they had just run out, catering had not put enough on board for everyone in First Class. Several hours later, I was getting ready to go to sleep and needed to take some medication so I asked the flight attendant for a bottle of water, to which she replied, “No, only one bottle of water per person, 36 people in First Class, 36 bottles of water.” I spent well over $10,000 for the ticket and American Airlines was kind enough to let me know that I only got one bottle of water for the entire flight across the Pacific Ocean. Not what I would call “First Class” customer service.

During that trip to New Zealand and also on a recent trip to Idaho, I went out each morning to get breakfast and had an extremely hard time finding a restaurant that had any waiters or waitresses. Place after place I walked into were beautiful, well-appointed, upscale and had a sign that told you order at the register, then wait to pick up your food and carry it to your table on your own. There was also a sign on my table that asked me please clean up after myself so that I could leave the table clean for the next patron. Perhaps this is a backlash from trying to set higher minimum wages, or simply a way to increase the profit of the restaurant by not having any servers, however I will tell you that every time I walked in one of those restaurants, I walked right back out to look for someplace I could sit down, get an actual live server and enjoy a relaxing breakfast while I read the news. I didn’t want self-service, I wanted First Class service.

The reason I tell you these stories is as a warning. Company after company will readily insist that delighting their customers is essential to growing and sustaining the success of their business, and yet I experience horrifically bad customer service all too often. So, before complaining about how bad the service is at other businesses, take a long hard look in the mirror and make sure that you are NOT making some of the same mistakes with your customers.

Create a Customer Service Credo, develop a specific plan and set of processes for consistently exceeding your customer’s expectations, train your people like crazy to follow those processes and focus on the customer, reward employees who do a great job and remove employees that don’t. It’s just that simple, but apparently the businesses I mentioned above did not think it was that important.


Jeffrey Hogue

CFP?, CEPA?, Senior Vice President-Wealth Management, Wealth Advisor, Portfolio Manager

8 年

John, Unfortunately you've only touched the tip of the iceberg. This approach (or lack thereof) has found itself into every aspect of our lives - even when lives are in the balance. Just think about how our health care system has evolved. People matter and, without them, there is no customers to serve. Lessons may be learned, but unfortunately those in the ivory towers of corporate America all to often loose sight when they focus on dollars and cents instead of duty and sense!

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Your last paragraph says it all. Amen to that.

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J.T. Shim, PhD, MBA

Consultant and coach! Developing top leaders!

8 年

John, if I hadn't met you in person and had an ongoing conversation with you, I would be likely to dismiss this as not credible. UberX drivers offer water! LOL. My conclusion is that many companies succeed in spite of themselves not because of themselves! My guess is that you're not telling the whole story for space. I imagine you might have asked the flight attendant to klepto one from second class or steerage? ?? If that didn't work, I might have just wandered back there myself. Alternatively, I might make an announcement (without PA), "We seem to be short on water here in first class, any one have any water you can spare?" Or just do individual solicitations and polling, "Are you getting enough water?" Sure you may be PNG, but you're very professional about it and not unreasonable in wishing to maintain hydration!

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Mark Watkins

Adeption: Delivering scalable leadership development that grows leaders capacity to solve complex adaptive problems, together. The very best of human touch & technology smarts combined

8 年
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Mark Watkins

Adeption: Delivering scalable leadership development that grows leaders capacity to solve complex adaptive problems, together. The very best of human touch & technology smarts combined

8 年

Keeping it real, thank you..

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