Customers will “Walk”, and they will “Talk”!

The last bag was zipped, we finally headed to bed to get an early start the next morning. A close friend would give us a ride to the airport – as promised he showed up bright and early and off we went trying to beat the Bay Area rush hour traffic. We were cutting it frantically close!

Anyone with enough travel experience can tell you that the anxiety and anticipation of how the saga unfolds from entering the terminal, till you have secured your seats on a plane, is almost a daunting process. Add kids to the mix and now its total chaos! It can never be as simple as they put it, “just hop on a plane”, let me assure you there are countless hops before you actually just hop on a plane.

That said, we were at the terminal 10 mins to cut off, however once in there we had trouble finding the airlines counter (lets call them Airline X for the purpose of this article) – the brain was getting fuzzy with all the scrolling on the flight information display system. The odd thing that morning was that we briskly walked up and down through every aisle and somehow kept missing their counter. Finally we found it all the way at the left end of the terminal, however as we got to the counter, the Airline X staff refused to check in our baggage stating that we missed the baggage check in by 5 minutes (we were still on time for the passenger check in though). We tried to reason with them, and they would not make an exception. Fury flying all over the place as one can only imagine!

As a consumer on the receiving end, here is a list of reasons why that interaction at the Airline X counter was a total disaster. We were at the airport on time but lost 5 mins trying to find the Airline X counter, but the staff totally discounted the fact that we were travelling with kids and made it in through rush hour traffic in one of the busiest metro area in the world. There was no empathy or reasoning, they were just doing their 9 – 5 job! Obviously, they felt no need to make a customer feel welcome and/or help elevate their stress. Perhaps it was not spelled out in their job description, oddly strange for a business in the hospitality industry.

To make matters worse, we had a connecting international flight and if we did not reach Honolulu on time, we would be missing our connecting flight to Sydney, Australia. Great - just how we imagined starting our winter holidays! As a frequent flier with Airline X and a long-standing customer, we could not believe the treatment we were receiving. We asked to speak with a manager, and they did very little to honor that request of course. In my head I was ready to go on Yelp and give them bad reviews all over the place. This was most likely the last time they would have us as a customer. An opportunity lost forever!

There was no way we were missing our connecting flight, so we hauled our over-sized bags to the lounge - we had the big suitcases for international travel. In despair we looked for flights out of SFO that morning, afternoon, evening, night essentially whatever was available – the holiday season travel made it difficult to find flights out. We eventually managed to book a flight out with Alaska Airlines at 2 pm PST which had a stopover at Kona, where it actually required us to switch planes in Kona to get to Honolulu! In all that sweltering heat, our kids behaved exceptionally well for being starved all day and lugging around their hand bags as the drama unfolded.

The lady at the Alaskan counter was a total delight on the other hand. Not only did she apologize for our experience that morning, something she had no hand in, but she also spoke politely with a warm smile and offered to check in our bags for free. That was stellar customer service right there! What a difference when your employees are empowered to make small decisions that can better a customer’s day. Next time we want to book flights to Hawaii, guess Airline X will probably not be the first to jump to mind!

All the while in Sydney, as much as we wanted to shut off our minds and have a good time the experience somehow had tainted our holiday. The fact that we had to deal with the airline after was bothersome, a heavy burden to say the least. The very first week back, we contacted Airline X customer service - they heard what we had to say and with no questions asked, decided to right their wrong. Even as they heard our complaints they already knew how grave a damage was done! In the words of Vince Lombardi “It takes months to find a customer……seconds to lose one.”

Our tickets had been purchased months ahead of time through a deal that was absolutely non-refundable, but they refunded the entire amount for the leg that we had missed. The customer service representative did everything within their means to help us out. Well, they did come around and mend things so they didn't entirely lose us but a vase once broken can be put together however the cracks always remain! Turning around a sour experience is good customer service but focusing on the customer experience is great customer service! Flying with them again, if we ever choose to, will somehow never be the same!