In times of crisis, true customer service stands out

We are in a global crisis of unprecedented proportions that is affecting the health and lives of billions of people around the world. All industries are impacted, some in an existential way. One of those industries is of course air travel, who are faced with global restrictions, fear and uncertainty leading to many cancellations and worried customers.

How a business responds to a crisis, like the COVID-19 situation that we're in today, exposes their true DNA and culture. This week, I experienced this firsthand. My wife and I are Dutch, but live in San Diego, California. My mother-in-law visits us once or twice per year and travelled to San Diego early-March, before things got really bad. She was scheduled to fly back on Thursday March 19 and started to get more and more worried as the global situation evolved. She was afraid of not being able to travel back or getting sick and having to rely on a health care system that is unknown to her and not speaking the English language well enough. Also, her husband had stayed behind in the Netherlands, so she was concerned about him as well. She just wanted to get home safely and in time, and our priority was helping her to make that happen while we too were worried about her.

On Monday March 16, what she was afraid of, happened; she received an email saying that her flight was cancelled and that she needed to reach out to the airline. This is where things started to get confusing and frustrating. Her flight was operated by British Airways, which is why they sent her the cancellation email. We reached out to the US phone number in the email, but that number was out of service. On Google, we found a UK phone number, which we tried and after being on hold for a while, we were put through to a customer service representative. The person on the phone said they couldn't help us, because the booking was made through American Airlines and told us to contact them.

That is what we did and it was when we experienced a first big difference in customer service. Rather than being on hold for over an hour or more, American Airlines has a service model that allows you to be called back when your place in line is up. That prevents you from being stuck on your phone all morning and prevents excessive phone charges. When they called us back, the customer service representative was able to help rebook my mother-in-law's flight swiftly, which allowed her to fly back on Thursday after all. So we thought...

A few hours later, she gets a message that her new flight is also cancelled. Now, let me say that I don't blame airlines for cancelling flights as a result of force majeure. They have lots of tough calls to make about getting people home, while protecting their viability as a business during times of extreme uncertainty and being subject to government decisions around the world. At this point in time, we were solely focused on getting my mother-in-law home safely as soon as possible. We called American Airlines (again benefitting from their convenient call-back system), but unfortunately they were unable to find any flights that could take her home and suggested that we talk to British Airways as they operate more flights between the US and Europe. However, this time British Airways didn't even put us on hold, let alone be put through to a customer service representative, they just played an automated message about high volumes of calls and hung up on us!

With the wellbeing and safe return of my mother-in-law top of mind, we decided to take control of the situation. We helped her pack her suitcase and drove to San Diego International Airport. When we arrived, we tried to get hold of anyone in British Airways as they still were displaying outbound flights on their website. However, none of their desks were manned and there was no-one from BA to be found at the entire airport. Thankfully, American Airlines was available, and their ground personnel responded to us quickly and called in a manager named Johnny.

Johnny was very empathetic and immediately understood the urgency of the situation. He was able to quickly find a route that would take my mother-in-law home the next day and reassured us that this flight would not be cancelled providing us with transparency and additional background. He also made sure she had convenient seating and sufficient layover time for her connecting flights. Thanks to Johnny, my mother-in-law was able to fly home the next day, reaching her destination swiftly above all safely.

Responding to a crisis asks a lot of a business, but the key differentiators in customer service are being available, responding timely and communicating with empathy and transparency. The COVID-19 situation presents businesses with unprecedented challenges, however if your company has a culture of true customer service and people passionate about delivering to the highest standards, you will stand out and will thrive in the long run.