It is Friday morning the 23rd of February in Mumbai. 8am. I just arrived at Mumbai airport ready to go home. It has been my first trip to India and my experiences have been quite exciting. That being said though, I am also tired and ready for Melbourne. I may fly a lot for work, but nothing is better than going home.
This is when I meet Joanna. Joanna is probably in her mid 70s, Australian and standing right next to the queue at the Jet Airways counter. She is on her phone and looks quite distressed. I ask her, if she is waiting to check in. She barely looks up from her phone and tells me no and then keeps mumbling to herself in a clear sign of anger.
So today I want to tell you the story of how I met Joanna and why she is your customer too.
I proceed to finish my check-in within minutes and am ready to head to the Jet Airways lounge to refresh before the flight. No matter how close you stay to the airport in Mumbai, it drains your energy when travelling through the crazy traffic. Looking back, I don’t know why I did what I did next, but let’s say I was intrigued to see an angry traveller and was happy to help.
So when I turn around and still see Joanna glued to her phone, I ask her in passing, if everything is alright? She looks up this time and just says: ‘I’ll never fly Qantas again’. That sounded interesting to me. You see, I fly Qantas quite a lot and I am a happy Platinum frequent flyer on the airline. Compared to all my oversees travel with other airlines, I always find Qantas to be a bit different – better to be honest.
I stop besides Joanna and ask her what happened. So here is her story in short: Joanna was travelling to Goa (her first time in India as well). She was booked on a cross-alliance (oneworld and star alliance) ticket on Qantas from Melbourne to Singapore and then on Air India from Singapore to Goa. Then onwards to Mumbai to fly on Jet Airways to Singapore and then finally Qantas to Melbourne. The first issue was the late departure from Melbourne on Qantas, which caused her to miss her connection flights. She then had to stay a night in Singapore (paid for by the airline). So far so annoying.
The real issue started when she wanted to check in on Jet Airways in Mumbai on her way back home. Turns out – she had no ticket. Due to her reschedule, the system voided her ticket. It basically assumed she missed her connection flights, which removed her from the oneworld part of her trip. The ground staff in Mumbai from Jet Airways could not help her as she had a QF ticket. The internet in the terminal was pretty much non-existent. The contact details Joanna found for Qantas in India were out of service and no one was picking up in Singapore (because their was no ground personal currently managing a QF flight). This is where I basically turned up.
Let me pause here and mention that Joanna has done nothing wrong so far. She had all her details of her trip printed. She tried to even help the ground staff. She was an experienced enough traveller. Her customer experience however was terrible. She was close to giving up and considered just buying another ticket to Melbourne. I have seen and experienced these type of issues before myself and they are unpleasant. The various touch points (digital and offline) could have picked up her struggle and helped her. None of the people and systems engaged did though. Joanna was stranded.
I had another number though. The platinum service line at Qantas. A lovely service agent ‘Jeremiah’ (sitting in Auckland, New Zealand) picked up the phone and resolved Joanna’s issue. It took Jeremiah 40mins to resolve the obvious issue. We just made our flights from Mumbai, but believe me: Joanna was very happy.
In order to help her out a bit further, I then asked the Qantas flight attendant on the flight from Singapore to look after her. Nothing an extra bottle of wine and some kindness can’t fix. Joanna is probably going to fly Qantas again.
The moral of the story is though: this type of experience happens all the time around the globe and it should be of no surprise to the companies involved. Passengers stranded at airports on codeshare tickets or even on tickets from other airlines.
Giving the ground staff an easy way to access similar type of help?
Even if you are not in the travel and transportation industry, I do see similar experiences across all industries all the time. It happens when a customer leaves the ‘perfect journey’ to conversion or has an issue with the service provided. It is in these moments I think brands need to be reminded that they are dealing with human beings and not just numbers on a path to revenue. There are a lot of customers like Joanna out there and they are your customers too…
In my engagements with a lot of brands I try to find a way to address this. Focusing on understanding journeys beyond a whiteboard can be helpful. Understanding ‘WHY’ behaviours or struggle happen on a digital channel, instead of just aggregating numbers can be another solution. Customer experience analytics is not just a ‘nice to have’ solution. It is a must, if you want to solve issues before they happen and make sure you do not have to many customers like Joanna – stranded in the formalities of the system you impose on your end customer.
My hope: brands become more successful by focusing on the experience customers have and try to find these ‘human’ engagements and change them for the better.
And me? I’ll keep flying…
