Airline Policies – You Can Do Better

If you followed my Twitter stream between Wednesday and Friday, you know I had a bit of a run-in with airline company policies. That’s all fine and dandy, I understand they have their rules and after all, It was my fault and was my mistake. Unfortunately I learned a very expensive lesson when I had very little money.

I want to address the fact of Airline policies, and the sinking nature of customer satisfaction on airlines (for the sake of integrity, I’ll leave names out, people were only following rules). The issue is that airline policies are restrictive, as they should be, but when it comes down to being able to keep clients happy and want to have their repeat business a company should seriously consider things as the come in on an as-is basis.

To take for example in my case; A college student who made a mistake with his booking for a policy he was not aware of, who would be glad to fly with your airline again, is different than a business man who can afford to pay for the hundreds of dollars for changes. Sure as students we often take the cheap route, and will fly with whoever gives us the best prices. But really guys, how much does it hurt to be nice? I wasn’t asking for you to cancel my flight so I could take my business somewhere else, I was asking for you to help me out with the current conditions. You still would have kept my money AND have been able to re-sell part of the ticket, isn’t that a win-win situation considering you could have made more money off of the one-way flight I wouldn’t have taken?

You can’t make policy for everything, but the number one policy should be compassion. Empathizing with the client and really putting yourself in that persons shoes and saying, “How can I truly help this person?” Stop being greedy bastards and start doing more for the people who keep giving you business.

Your economists and statisticians can take into account, if you provide 200x better customer service, I can guarantee you that the client will be willing to pay more. Why does Virgin Atlantic charge more for their flights? Cause their customer service rocks, and their in-flight service is catered to the client, not the benefit of the company. Your company is losing ground because instead of simply raising the cost of the flight which people are more likely to pay, you decide to change your baggage rules to 1 checked bag instead of 2, or charging for carry-on bags.

Seriously guys, you can do better.