WHEN BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE TRAUMATIZES If you have four speeches to give in four cities on three continents in five straight days it is not unusual to be anxious, regarding airlines. One delayed departure can make your commitments a nightmare. In the week before, I had such a schedule and I was anxious. Eventually I suffered real trauma. But it was not from a delayed departure. All my flights took off on schedule indeed most of them actually pushed back a few minutes before departure time. And it was not from any of the other typical airline irritations that can become aggravated; like your bags heading from Europe to Latin America as you move towards your destination in Africa at more than five hundred miles an hour. On this trip, crammed with activity and many reasons to be sensitive to anything going wrong, nothing went wrong, yet I came away feeling much traumatized from the airlines doing nothing negative. The stiffness came from past experience. As a business teacher I find it typical that some mantras about what makes for good business tend to be part of your repertoire. Seldom does this become a matter more than how you deliver superior performance over rivals. The above recent personal experience led me to a view I never thought much of, which is that bad customer service may actually traumatize customers to point that they can be affected medically. You are in trouble when the logo of an airline makes you feel you are about to mess up your commitments just by the sight of the logo of an airline. If and when that happens to you your troubles may really be big even though logic should suggest the coming troubles of that airline may be bigger. As a business teacher, it also was, for me, a huge learning point about how little it takes to make a customer feel valued and how a customer that feels abused by a commercial enterprise can actually be so negatively impacted by experience it can affect their mental and physical well being in a way the bad enterprise may not realize could amount to some form of genocide if it seems the lot of a particular group of people. My travels of the last week, which many around me would consider routine, in my experience, were similar to an experience two years ago that made me abandon this airline I found myself booked last week on by an international organization, even though I have meticulously tried to avoid it for two years. Twenty two years before I had told myself something has to be wrong with you to ever be seen aboard this airline. I had been a regular First Class passenger on this airline, as an execute in industry on a regular commute into Europe. In those days they had a practice of significantly overbooking the Lagos route. It was not unusual to come with a First class ticket and end up on an Economy seat. As the troubles for getting a refund were just so much, few people bothered to pursue the matter. After numerous occasions of experiencing this I decided it was a deliberate scam on the part of the airline. I did then what many customers believe is their only option, walk away. This was after a London Lagos flight of July 11 1991. For nearly a decade I never stepped on board an aircraft operated by the airline. I had, as a marketing teacher friend of mine used to say, voted with my feet. In one newspaper interview a question led me to remarking that I never fly that airline because of the experience I had. At the time they evidently had a General Manager in Lagos who scammed the environment and was told it was not a good idea to allow people live with such views, especially if those were people whose voices were heard. So he asked for an appointment to visit me at the Lagos Business School. He came with his team to persuade me that things were different and that they would like me to return to flying with them. That visit, with no special offer, was enough to say to me that someone cared. Many times that all customers are looking for, a sense they have not been taken for granted. I promised I would resume flying British Airways. As promise keeping is a key personal value, I progressively returned to that airline, to the chagrin of my friends at Lufthansa. That was until two years ago. The structure of my movement that week in September 2012 involved a high profile lecture in Lagos on a Thursday, a class at the Lagos Business School that same day, a speech at Imperial College in London the following day Friday, alongside then National Planning Minister Shamsudeen Usman, a meeting of the Board of American University of Nigeria on Saturday in New Orleans, Louisiana in the US, a meeting on Monday morning in London and the opening keynote for the ICAN conference at 9am Tuesday morning in Abuja, a class at the Lagos Business School in Lagos on Wednesday and the next day the annual lecture of the Nigerians in the Square mile, (Financial Services) in London and a visit to the Film Village in Mumbai India on Saturday. I had to hope that everything went smoothly. I did my Lagos duties, got into London, enjoyed the time with the imperial College students and Larry Izamoje whose daughter was in the executive of the association of Imperial College, and had used her father’s contact to reach out to me. As the session would run into the early evening I had to get on the very last possible flight across the Atlantic. The British Airways late flight to New York got me across, arriving close to midnight and I connected on one of the US airlines at 6am to New Orleans. As my meetings ended on Sunday at Noon, I rushed off to the Airport with Alhaji Ahmed Joda and Akin Kekere-Ekun who were also bound for London via a Washington Dulles connection. The difference was they were booked on United, I was on British Airways. Both our flights were for about 10:30pm, the last flights across the Atlantic. On landing at Dulles I saw on the monitor that British Airways had cancelled their own flight. Alarm bells went off in my head. My noon meeting in London and my connection into Abuja. I raced to the desk to request they transfer me to the United flight. They just kept trying to encourage me to go home and come back the following day to get on the next BA flight. I tried to explain about my afternoon meeting in London and my need to be in Abuja on Tuesday morning, good and ready before 8am. They pussy footed around till the United flight closed then they said to me United is departing now, that option is too late. I had never been more angry in my life. Just the slightest of consideration would have led to solutions. The flight was cancelled by them, not me. But that can happen. All kinds of reasons can cause that. Just good faith effort based on my own commitments could have made them get me on the United flight. When I insisted that even if I had to try and reschedule the London meeting I could not imagine not being at the ICAN opening, they suggested that if I got to New York I could get on the 7am flight which would bring me into London about 7pm and allow time to connect to Abuja. It was nearly midnight at this time. So how do I get to New York. Sorry all flights are now gone say the BA officials, just find your way over land. And by the way, because the Dulles flight was cancelled you lost your seat to Abuja. It is a very tight situation, right now we have an economy seat for you but we are sure we will get something done before you arrive London. So I call a taxi driver. He could drive me to New York for 650 US dollars. I could not afford to disappoint the ICAN people so I took off on a 5hour all night ‘’vigil’’ drive to New York. Got on the flight and arrived London. In London Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and the contingent from the World Bank annual meeting in Tokyo were connecting to Abuja. That meant any premium class seat bumped, even if it was BA’s fault, was bumped. I asked for my seat properly booked and confirmed and a nice polite gentleman kept saying he was trying to do something until boarding was announced and he apologized, promising customer service would get in touch with me as soon as I arrived Nigeria. Not heard from BA customer service to this day. Not even with prodding of a letter of protest. I returned to London two days later on the same airline and went on to Mumbai on Friday on the same airline. Complained to anybody who could listen but nobody gave a damn. And it seemed, as I look back that all I was fishing for was ‘we are sorry’. But it did not seem to matter to BA how they mess up your world on contracted agreements where they failed to do their part. So I came before ICAN, thankfully, but without two nights of sleep as I could not sleep on an economy seat from London to Abuja. I survived it, but not without bruises. On my way back I shared the experience with a British Architect friend who came to get me from Heathrow as I had a day’s break on the return from Mumbai. My friend in London harassed me into writing about my experience to the Chief executive of British Airways and undertook to deliver it to the BA head office in London. No reaction came from British Airways. When next I was in London, he asked if I heard from BA. I said no, and he insisted on my printing another copy of the letter. He took it again to the BA HQ and had someone sign acknowledgement of receipt. Still not a note of receipt of the mail from BA. I became so irritable at even the sight of the BA counters at airports and just refrained myself from suing the airline in the United States by the American University President who said she avoided British Airways for their poor customer service, urging that a law suit just increases aggravation. Is just voting with the feet enough? I found out when on this recent trip that when an international organization booked me to go from London to Dubai I almost took ill just stepping unto a BA cabin. I had been booked to come to London by an organization that invited me to speak in London but chose to buy an Arik ticket and allowed the return ticket on BA to lapse without use. That was how bad I felt. But I could not imagine the effect of flying the airline again. The trauma and the logic of the loss is a matter for debate. Before landing Dubai I could feel really ill even though nothing untowardly happened on that flight. It was a wake up call for me that poor customer service really truly beyond irritation can traumatize. If an executive club member who was in the Gold category could be treated with such disregard, my British Architect friend had said, imagine what is happening to the fellow who saves up all he has to make that one flight in two years Customers need to begin to organize and fight back. The cost they beer for poor service is high. Ralph Nader may have been motivated by a number of reasons to fight for the rights of the consumer, trauma of the psyche is a sure good addition. PU
Posted on: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 17:12:42 +0000
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