LESS IS MORE

I want to narrate an incident which I witnessed a few days back. I was traveling from Chennai to Mumbai in one of the popular domestic airline which offers loyalty program & I being one of the frequent flier of this airline, was offered the most sought after emergency exit seat (albeit the middle seat). There were gentlemen seated next to me, one in the window & the other in the aisle & I assume that they both were also frequent fliers of this airline. Once we settled down in our seats, we exchanged greetings & got engaged in general chit chatting.  

The plane took off on time & soon the flight attendants started serving dinner. I preferred vegetarian & both my new friends were having the non-vegetarian food. Now the trouble starts – the person sitting to my right in the window seat started having dinner quickly & almost had 30-40% of the food. The gentleman sitting to my left in the aisle seat was watching a movie in his mobile phone & therefore was a bit late in starting to have his dinner. But the moment he started dinner he was furious & called the flight attendant. He was complaining about the taste of the food which was sour & as per him it was stale. Immediately after this the gentleman sitting to my right also called the flight attendant & complained about the same thing. Both of them returned the food & were very unhappy.  

The flight attendants were courteous enough to apologize & offered the non-vegetarian from the premiere class. The gentleman sitting to my left now only wanted vegetarian food which the flight attendants were quick to get it for him. The gentleman sitting to my right refused to have any food & preferred only sparkling water with a piece of lemon in it. The senior most flight attendant came & enquired about the incident & apologized. She also assured that this incident will be taken up with the kitchen department. She insisted that both of them give the feedback in the form so that this matter could be escalated & investigated. They both refused to give the feedback & continued to express their anger. I thought the flight attendant did everything that they could & all that they should have done in such situations. But my new friends were extremely unhappy & kept grumbling & complaining about airline for the rest of the flight. I may be wrong but my view is that the same food was served to many other people in the flight but none of them complained (may be the taste was not so good for them).  

Well I am not passing any judgement about who was right & who was wrong. The point i am trying to make is the perception & mind set which we make about certain things. This airline offers loyalty program, free food (with tea or coffee) during the flight, bottled water, newspapers, option of choosing our favorite seat by web check in for free, chances for business class upgrade and priority boarding for their members. Their flight attendants are more professional & courteous than most of the other airlines. Therefore many of us are used to be treated in a particular manner & our expectation levels are always very high with this airline. Any deviation from that level would annoy us beyond explanation. Now compare this to some other airline which does not give free food & we have to book our meals along with the ticket by paying extra money. Even the food which is served are the cold horrible sandwiches & canned juices or colas. We do get a cup of water (once during the duration of the flight) when we request. There are no priority boarding or free selection of seats (most of the comfortable seats are available at extra charges). But still we don’t complain because we are used to such treatment & our expectation levels are very low or there are no expectations at all.

For me there was an important learning from this incident. We should never raise the expectations of the customers if we are not sure about maintaining them at all times. Instead promise slightly less than what we are capable of so that any extra delivery from our end would make the customer happy. The mantra should always be under commit & over deliver & not the other way round.